Did you ever consider giving more then lip service to the projects that "inspired" you? Or did you not think any further than self promotion after your AI built on top of these projects?
I guess those are rhetorical questions, because I know the answer: it was easier not to think at all.
I absolutely love metal where the vocalist sounds riiiight in the edge of losing their fucking mind. Good shit
This is happening currently, might explain some of the behavior: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/76359803
Have you checked the hardware compatibility list, and the hardware requirements? What are your PC specs? Qubes relies heavily on virtualization and your hardware must support certain features (and those features must be turned on in the BIOS) for good performance.
So confirm that you have turned on all the recommended hardware features, which should be on BEFORE install, you may need to reinstall if they weren't turned on as I'm not sure what Qubes does at install time if those features are off.
https://www.qubes-os.org/hcl/ https://doc.qubes-os.org/en/r4.3/user/hardware/system-requirements.html
Hey I see you are trying out Qubes! But I think you got sucked down a bit of a rabbit hole here. CPU pinning is a very deep customization, it is absolutely not necessary, and is a case of the author of the guide wondering "can I do this?" and finding out that yes, there is a way. But I would suggest that you not worry about it, as the difference in performance may not even be noticeable to you.
The best way to approach qubes as a new user is to do almost nothing to modify dom0, and do all your playing around in the qubes.
Also, for in depth tech support like this I would always post to the Qubes forums. Its a niche OS, so posting on a general Linux forum is probably going to not get you a ton of help.
You are pretty clearly just starting off on this journey. What I'll say is this:
If you don't know what a risk profile is, then start there. That will help you understand what you should and should not be doing at your level of knowledge. Then, just get started, but be open minded. Nothing is a silver bullet.
I've personally found Qubes to be the best privacy/anonymity solution for my risk profile, but explaining that would be hundreds of pages. You just have to try it. For example, here's one challenge: you know that VPN is recommended for torrenting. How do you use Qubes with a VPN? That is a great road to go down for understanding, and you can start by searching the Qubes forums and documentation.
Accept that this will take a good chunk of your time, especially if you only have one PC and will be daily driving Qubes. So, maybe don't start this journey during a busy time in your life when you have lots of other responsibilities. This stuff is best done as a "deep dive", where you just set aside time and work until you've accomplished your goal.
Finally: interact with the community. Hit a dead end? Post in the appropriate community (or post asking where that is). Join group chats, which are faster than forums and more personal. Don't just go it alone... you will burn out quick!
I hope this man slips in the shower.
IMO the answer from a security perspective is that the Linux distro "official repo" model is about as good as it gets. However somehow we still have Fedora COPR, openSUSE OBS, Arch AUR, etc. Those are essentially like FDroid. If someone can solve the problem of why apps can't be easily just added and controlled in the official repos, maybe we'd be getting somewhere. Seems to be an industry issue.