Mostly yes. Your applications run in a standard Linux environment and if you pop up a terminal, hey, it's your favorite distro and it works.

There's some learning curve for features which exist for valid reasons, especially around communicating between domains. For instance, copy-and-paste between qubes requires extra steps. Plugging in a USB keyboard or mouse doesn't just work - you have to authorize it first (just click the OK button using a PS/2 mouse, or laptop's touchpad). You have to learn how to move files between qubes. USB drives, cameras, and microphones aren't globally available to all applications - you have to attach them to a qube first. You can install software using apt-get inside a qube, but it won't persist across reboots - you have to update the OS template.

I want those extra steps and complications - they are features, not a bugs! The first few days you'll be looking things up in the FAQ. After that it's pretty easy.

There are a few sore points that don't go away. You don't get GPU acceleration in your web browser, so rendering is slower. Gaming is not an option. Your application qubes live behind a firewall qube, so things that require network broadcast like Chromecast won't work. Those are fine for me but not for everyone.

Qubes is enough of a pain to use that another OS project started to try to take the concept and make it more usable:

https://spectrum-os.org/

Doing so has proved hard and slow so far, and Spectrum hasn't had a usable release for the masses yet.

You would feel at home more as a cloud native, because everything runs in its own VM, spun up and down on demand.

All software runs in Linux VMs, so it is practically the same as running several Linux operating systems with a nice UI.

Everyone is somewhat targeted by the state already... Just not at a pin point level yet.

If you're targeted by state, Qubes on a PC isn't secure enough. It sits at a weird place, where it is stronger than your regular Linux, and showcases interesting ideas, but is quite restrictive in what you can do and doesn't provide any real security guarrantees. It's an open-source small shop project. Xen bugs and kernel bugs are too frequent, big boys know them/buy them/make them/exploit them, surely silently for years.

The idea your data on a PC connected to Internet can be really secured from the most powerful actors is very naive.

It might be an overkill if you need too big efforts to switch. I did not feel that way. The independent VMs for different workflows even helped to organize my work.

It's mostly a huge pain in the GPU, unless you only need the basics.

Probably depends on the hardware. See this: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/community-recommended-computers....

Upd: yes, also there is no GPU acceleration in the VMs.