Download Qubes OS 4.2.0

Version 4.2.0 of Qubes OS released. Qubes OS is a privacy and security oriented operating system. It uses security by isolation, which means that the different parts of the OS run in separate VMs. Unlike VMware Workstation and Virtualbox, for example, there is no host OS, but the VMs run directly on the available hardware. The virtualization is provided by bare-metal hypervisor Xen and the user environment can be chosen from Fedora, Debian, Whonix and Windows, among others. More information about Qubes OS can be found here this page are being found. The release notes for this edition are listed below.

Qubes OS 4.2.0 has been released!

Qubes OS 4.2.0 brings a host of new features, major improvements, and numerous bug fixes. The ISO and associated verification files are available on the Downloads page.

What's new in Qubes OS 4.2.0?

• Dom0 upgraded to Fedora 37 (#6982)
• Xen upgraded to version 4.17
• Default Debian template upgraded to Debian 12
• Default Fedora and Debian templates use Xfce instead of GNOME (#7784)
• SELinux support in Fedora templates (#4239)
• Several GUI applications rewritten, including:
  • Applications Menu (also available as preview in R4.1) (#6665), (#5677)
  • Qubes Global Settings (#6898)
  • Create New Qube
  • Qubes Update (#7443)
• Unified grub.cfg location for both UEFI and legacy boot (#7985)
• PipeWire support (#6358)
• fwupd integration for firmware updates (#4855)
• Optional automatic clipboard clearing (#3415)
• Official packages built using Qubes Builder v2 (#6486)
• Split GPG management in Qubes Global Settings
• Qrexec services use new qrexec policy format by default (but old format is still supported) (#8000)

For further details, see the Qubes 4.2 release notes and the full list of issues completed for Qubes 4.2.

Known issues in Qubes OS 4.2.0

DomU firewalls have completely switched to nftables. Users should add their custom rules to the custom-input and custom-forward chains. (For more information, see issues #5031 and #6062.) Also see the full list of open bug reports affecting Qubes 4.2. We strongly recommend updating Qubes OS immediately after installation in order to apply all available bug fixes.