Thanks for the suggestion. I'm looking for something that is more interactive though. Ideally it should be like a love child of MS visio / LibreOffice Draw and vim ;)
Just my two cents: for formal diagrams I find code is often faster than interactivity but feels slower because the output is indirect and so it doesn't quite feel like I am doing as much.
For me this is the case as well if I know what I'm drawing. If I need to find a way to 'put things on paper', I'd rather have some interactive options, preferably speedy ones ;)
Qubes does not use Whonix for anything. Whonix can use Qubes, though.
Qubes and Whonix are fundamentally different. They attempt to solve two different issues.
Whonix solves privacy via obfuscation, Qubes solves security through virtualization / compartmentalization and specifically does not believe in security by obfuscation. You do not have to choose between the two if you run Whonix inside of Qubes, but I have a feeling most users who think they want privacy really want security, and it would be a hassle to constantly use Whonix.
I highly recommend Qubes, if you aren't already using it. It isn't for the faint of heart, however, and there are a long list of bugs to squash and features to add. Things are coming along nicely though, and this year they plan to test-drive corporate support for Qubes OS as a business platform, which if successful should give them quite a bit of capital for expansion and auditing of essential code.
Important distinction in terminology. Qubes _runs_ Whonix, Whonix can _use_ Qubes as a host. And the Whonix workstation is an optional addition that a lot of users find no need for. It does not come preloaded, you must enable it during installation. But Qubes does not use Whonix anymore than Windows uses Firefox when you run the firefox process.
In software, when you say something "uses" something, you are implying it uses it as a backend or API. But Qubes does not communicate with nor expose any information to Whonix, and especially does not utilize it for any sort of functionality.
sounds like a distinction without a significant difference. "To improve your privacy and anonymity on the internet, you can install the Whonix Template on your Qubes machine." https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/whonix/ to me that makes it sound like the quebes-os people use whonix to improve privacy
Why do you think an operator of a computer is called a user?
I use Qubes and do not use Whonix, and most users don't either. Qubes is security-focused, offering increased privacy in the process, but Whonix is for the privacy-focused and has separate use-cases. I'm not a journalist in some 3rd world dictatorship so using Whonix would just degrade my user experience.
But that's the thing. As users, we can use a piece of software, but our operating system is not using anything. And it is erroneous and misguiding to say that Qubes OS "uses" Whonix, because again, that implies special meaning, such as using it as a backend for main internet access. This isn't some trivial distinction. It is a very basic, important distinction when you are talking about software.
You may not personally launch Xfce Terminal either but it doesn't mean Qubes doesn't use it as a terminal emulator. Qubes uses Whonix for anonymous VMs. It's bizarre that you're so set on making this distinction that not even the creators attempt to make.
Oh? Can you provide context where they say that Qubes uses Whonix? Under their doc file for Whonix they just mention that, if you want to use Tor, Qubes can make use of Whonix as a ProxyVM. That is the correct usage of the term "use". But not only is that not the same thing as using Whonix for a general backend for operation, many users forgo installing Whonix altogether.
This whole thing devolved from me just trying to make a distinction for other HN users so that they wouldn't get the wrong idea and not try out Qubes because they might think the systems are coupled and are worried of, say, being hacked by the FBI and put on more lists for using Tor.
Sorry to nitpick, but I believe you meant to say something along the lines of "Whonix runs on top of Qubes as a VM (virtual machine), just like any other typical OS does in Qubes."[1]
Not only are you not required to route traffic over Tor, but you can create arbitrary tree network topologies for all VMs.
For example, see the screenshot on https://github.com/kbrn/qubes-app-print-vm-status. VMs can access the 'net through "sys-firewall" (i.e. in the clear); or through "[redacted]-vpn", which has firewall rules enforced by "sys-firewall" that reject any traffic not to the designated VPN endpoint; or through "sys-whonix", which obviously routes all traffic over Tor.
Another great feature afforded by combining Qubes and Whonix is that it's trivial to use Whonix as a disposable VM, so you can really be sure one browser instance (say, for porn) can never affect another browser instance (say, for Facebook, or for leaking the next tranche of NSA docs).
If anyone wants to use logo, you can 'import turtle' in Python and start right away ;)
See https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/turtle.html