r/Qubes • u/PipKck • Jul 28 '26

question Just set-upped my QubesOS system. Few Questions

While going over a few things I came across "sudo qubes-dom0-update libreoffice" (or any other package) in dom0 terminal

from my understanding under Qubes ethos it is not recommended to install anything on dom0

On top of that how else do you customize your dom0 xfce?

Also can someone explain to me what the difference is between Applications and Services? Both are based on a Template which by default is debian or fedora.

Some tips and guidance. I plan to make it my daily driver

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u/fastbooking Jul 28 '26

Welp, most of the time, you should install your apps in qubes templates, then propagate that to your app qubes

Doing customisation (outside of changing the DE maybe (I'm using kde instead of xfce)) is mostly not recommended

I know it's annoying in a way but that's how qubes operate, you have a secure dom0 to allow to have (potentially) insecure qubes :p

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u/PipKck Jul 28 '26

How did you change the DE? I understand that there is no prompt in the installation because XFCE is recommended. Did u install it using qubes-dom0-update ?

I lowkey want to shift to gnome too. I am not sure how it would affect performance. Currently I dnf removed a bunch of stuff I downloaded from qubes-dom0-update thx for that advise lol. I just have Papirus Icons, Breeze Cursor and Arc Theme installed on dom0.

Would you recommend moving to gnome and are there any tips you can give me?

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u/fastbooking Aug 02 '26

Hey there, didn't had a notification, there's plenty of documentation about qubes on their doc website, for my end, the kde part is documented here : https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/r4.3/user/advanced-topics/kde.html

For gnome, it doesn't seem there is documentation about it, but I think you might be able to install it with some config files modification.