Tech Wire

Qubes OS 4.0-rc2 has been released!
https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2017/10/23/qubes-40-rc2/

We’re pleased to announce the second release candidate for Qubes 4.0! As usual,
this release candidate includes numerous bug fixes over the
previous one (https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2017/07/31/qubes-40-rc1/).
Two of the most important changes are:

Improved PCI passthrough (https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2017/10/18/msi-support/) with sys-net and sys-usb running in
HVM mode by default. With this change, we’ve officially achieved our
Qubes 4.0 goal (https://www.qubes-os.org/news/2016/07/21/new-hw-certification-for-q4/) of having all qubes running in HVM mode by
default for enhanced security.

Whonix templates are back! We’ve fixed various (https://phabricator.whonix.org/T697)
blocking (https://phabricator.whonix.org/T710) issues (https://phabricator.whonix.org/T491), and the Whonix templates are
available in the default installer once again. We’re even debuting new
Whonix-based DispVMs!

There were two primary reasons for the substantial delay (https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/releases/4.0/schedule/) of this
release. The first was our discovery of the security issue (https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-secpack/blob/master/QSBs/qsb-034-2017.txt) that would
come to be known as XSA-237 (https://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/advisory-237.html). As part of our coordination with the Xen Project
Security Team, we had to wait through the embargo period until XSA-237 was
publicly released before integrating various PCI passthrough fixes.

The second reason for the delay was the last-minute discovery of a bug related
to resizing the root filesystem of a qube. We faced a choice (https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-devel/20171013222228.GF10749%40mail-itl)
between (1) keeping the partition layout the same at the cost of increasing
maintenance complexity in the future or (2) changing the partition layout to
simplify the code at the cost of rebuilding all the templates and delaying the
release. We chose (https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-devel/20171016134524.GI1059%40mail-itl) the second option, which resulted in an
additional one week delay, but we’re confident that this is the most prudent
move in the long run.

As a consequence of the partition layout change, it will be necessary for
current 4.0-rc1 testers to perform a clean reinstall of 4.0-rc2 rather than
attempting to upgrade in-place. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience.
Our growing community has been putting in a lot of hard work testing the first
4.0 release candidate and submitting bug reports, and we greatly appreciate your
effort. From the whole Qubes team, thank you! Your feedback helps us make the
final release as stable as possible. Please keep up the great work!

Further details, including full installation and update instructions,
are available in the Qubes 4.0 release notes (https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/releases/4.0/release-notes/). The new
installation image is available on the Downloads (https://www.qubes-os.org/downloads/) page.

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