**NOTE:** Do not try to install Qubes in a VM, e.g. VMWare. Qubes has its own bare-metal hypervisor, and, as the name suggests, it should be installed on a bare-metal, not in some VM. Even if you somehow succeed installing it inside some other VMM system, you will likely get horrible performance and perhaps even some strange crashes, caused by the outer VMM, that is obviously not prepared for running a nested hypervisor in its VMs.
At this stage we don't have a standalone automatic installer, so the installation process is currently a bit complicated and requires some knowledge of Linux. The installation consists of a few stages that are described in detail below...
**NOTE:** If you're migrating from **Qubes Alpha 1**, and want to preserve your AppVMs (specifically your data), you should use ```qvm-backup``` tool to make a backup (Qubes Alpha 3 will let you automatically restore it later).
**NOTE:** ~~If you're migrating from **Qubes Alpha 2**, however, then ```yum update``` executed in Dom0 konsole should do the work, and you could skip this guide.~~ Some people reported problems when upgrading from Alpha 2 to Alpha 3, so it seems like it might better to reinstall from scratch in that case too.
First we need to install a minimal Linux distribution that would later become our Dom0 system. We strongly recommend choosing a **64-bit Fedora 13 distribution**.
Note: This might look unnecessary that we install Fedora KDE packages now, only to remove them in one of the next steps and install Qubes KDE packages instead. However, most users will find it easier to proceed this way.
Complete the installation, reboot, verify you have X Window System working, complete the post-installation setup in which you create an unprivileged user account, that will be used for logging into the X system.
If you can't get your X Window System working at this time, it means you have have a graphics card not supported by a mainstream Linux distribution. This really should happen only in case of some very exotic hardware (or very new). In any case, this is nothing Qubes or Xen, related, so please do not ask about the solution on Qubes or Xen mailing lists.
If you can't get your X Window System working at this time, it suggests your graphics card driver is incompatible with Xen, which is a polite way of saying that the driver is most likely broken, as any decently written driver should be Xen compatible (when used in Dom0). The Xen mailing list might be a proper place to report the problem, but we would also be interested in learning about ~~broken~~ Xen-incompatible cards, so please also copy your report to the Qubes mailing list.
1. Create the default DisposableVM savefile. It is the saved VM image that is used to quickly bring up a DisposableVM. As user in *qubes* group execute
**NOTE:** If you're migrating from a previous system (e.g. Alpha 1), and want to restore your previous AppVMs from a backup, use the [qvm-backup-restore](/wiki/BackupRestore) tool.
NOTE: you should now work as **normal user**, i.e. the same you use for logging into your X system, and the same you added to the qubes 'group' in the previous step, or you will not be able to star this VM as a normal user!
NOTE: You can also use the graphical Qubes Manager to create/remove AppVMs -- just click on the Qubes Manager icon in the tray!
Try running some applications, e.g. Firefox from the random machine. When you run an application for the first time, and the corresponding AppVM has not yet been started, it might take some time (15-30 seconds) for it to start. Subsequent apps from the same AppVM will be starting much faster.
1. Verify that Xen uses IOMMU/VT-d indeed by looking into `xm dmesg` output
NOTE: Xen can use IOMMU/VT-d only if you have hardware with IOMMU/VT-d support and a non-broken BIOS that also supports VT-d (specifically BIOS should expose a correct ACPI DMAR table)
1. If you use full disk encryption via LUKS (default if you chose "Encrypt disk" in Fedora installer), and if you have a Core i5/i7 processor that supports the new AESNI instruction, you should pass the following argument to your kernel (by editing your ```/boot/grub/grub.conf``` file):
``` {.wiki}
rdblacklist=aesni-intel
```
This should be appended the ```kernel``` line in ```grub.conf```. This will disable use of kernel module with AESNI support, which apparently is buggy.
1. If you have Nvidia graphics card, be sure to update your ```xorg-x11-drv-nouveau```, at least to version 0.0.16-7.20100423, otherwise you might have problems with the suspend/resume operation:
``` {.wiki}
yum update 'xorg-*'
```
1. If you have Nvidia graphics card, you can experience strange icon distortions after resume from suspend. Hopefully some new xorg driver will resolve this issue.
1. If you have Intel HD graphics card on Core i5/i7 processor, do **not** enable desktop effects right after installation (or at least do not choose OpenGL engine). There is a known problem with those cards drivers that causes the original X shipped with F13 to crash every few minutes, when OpenGL is used. This happens on standard Fedora installation, even without Xen and without Qubes. This problem vanishes when one upgrades to xorg-x11-server 1.8.2, OpenGL and composition works flawlessy then.
