Qubes OS 4.3.2 bundles up the accumulated security fixes

The Qubes OS developers have announced the stable release of version 4.3.2 of their security-oriented operating system for single-user desktop computing. Qubes relies on Xen-based virtualization to create isolated compartments called qubes, each implemented as a virtual machine, so that a compromise in one component cannot spread to the others or leak information across them.

This is a patch release: rather than introducing new features, it pulls together all the security updates and bug fixes that have accumulated since the previous stable build. The idea, the team explains, is to offer a secure and convenient way to install — or reinstall — the latest stable Qubes release from an already up-to-date ISO.

What's new

The headline changes are an upgrade of the default Fedora template to version 44 and of the kernel-latest package to Linux 7.2. Beyond that, the release rolls in further security updates and numerous bug fixes.

A known issue

The developers flag one caveat. Templates restored in 4.3.2 from a backup made before 4.3 may keep pointing at the repositories of their original Qubes OS release. A clean install is unaffected: fresh templates on a new 4.3.2 system behave correctly. Users who did an in-place upgrade from 4.2 to 4.3 instead of restoring from a backup are also safe, since the relevant fix is already part of that upgrade process.

The Qubes-R4.3.2-x86_64.iso image, roughly 8 GB in size, along with the associated verification files, is available from the project's downloads page.

Source: DistroWatch