[Contribution] qmenu

[3o14r473]

Dev: @sine3o14nnae PoC: https://github.com/sine3o14nnae/qmenu

The problem you're addressing (if any) It takes a long time to open the Qube Manager and to click your way around. Managing all the preferences of qubes, firewall rules, applications, etc takes a while. The command line tools do not provide any fast alternative.

Describe the solution you'd like Implementing the functionality of the Qube Manager and qvm-devices into a shell script that utilizes dmenu to provide the user with a drop down menu, from which they then can quickly configure their qube preferences, firewall rules, applications, etc.

Where is the value to a user, and who might that user be? It is just a shortcut away and lets you get things done very quickly with only the keyboard. It is not meant to be a replacement for the Qube Manager or any other tool, but as an alternative.

Advanced users and especially murophobic users could benefit from this.

Additional context qmenu is split into 2 packages, consisting of qmenu-vm and qmenu-dv.

The former acts as an alternative to the Qube Manager, though it is also able to attach and detach devices to and from qubes.

The latter acts as an alternative to the Qubes Devices Widget. This gives the user the option to have one or more shortcuts solely for quickly managing connected audio input, block and USB devices with the keyboard.

Suggestions to improve qmenu are more than welcome and will be happily applied.

[marmarta]

@marmarek , take a look - it's quite a lovely tool. I'm not sure how/in what form should we incorporate it into the core (but if not, discoverability is always a problem) - it's not, I guess, the most intuitive for many people, but I can easily imagine myself using it especially when I'm on the go or the cat has got my mouse.

[3o14r473]

• Added qmenu-al. This one lets the user quickly launch domU applications. The --only option will only list applications of the qube, that the currently focused window belongs to.

[fepitre]

@marmarta: Package is built in QubesOS-contrib repository: https://github.com/QubesOS-contrib/updates-status/issues/12

[3o14r473]

By default, executing the Qube Settings application will launch the Qube Manager qube settings for a qube. My question is if this should be changed to instead launch into the qmenu-vm settings for a particular qube, whenever a user decides to install qmenu from qubes-repo-contrib and use qmenu-vm as an alternative to the Qube Manager.

One way this can easily be achieved is by replacing the contents of /usr/bin/qubes-vm-settings in dom0 with qmenu-vm --qube="$1" when qmenu is installed.

However, this method would be annoying for users that decide to install qmenu because they want to use qmenu-am or -dm but want to keep using the Qube Manager instead of qmenu-vm.