>>>> Seriously?
>>>>
>>>> The Windows XP CD holds less than 650 MB of data. (It's a CD.)
>>>
>>> Oh, so you want to compare a modern Linux distribution against Windows
>>> from 10-ish years ago?  *Really*?
>>
>> I'm comparing Linux against the Windows release that most people are
>> currently using.
>
> A more appropriate comparison is latest against latest.

I don't know how big the latest version of Windows is. I've never 
installed it. More to the point, I don't know of anybody who's using it yet.

>> It's still frustrating that I have to download multiple GB of data for
>> libraries that I'm not actually going to use, just because the package
>> dependency system isn't a little more fine-grained.
>
> You don't know that you're not going to use them.

That's an absurd argument.

If the PC doesn't have a sound card then I know, for a fact, that I 
don't need the sound daemon. If there are no Windows machines on the 
network then I know, for a fact, that I don't need Samba. I could go on.

The only reason that installing a text editor installs multi-GB of 
unrelated stuff is because dependency tracking is too coarse.

> If you want something more specialized, you can do a custom roll-your-own
> with SUSE Studio.  No need to download anything you don't want, because
> you build the distribution on a remote system using a web browser, test
> it, and then download it.

Now that's what I'm talking about... That sounds actually useful.

>> Yes. Because spending a week trying to fix something it *totally* the
>> same as just giving up and complaining about it. Oh, wait...
>
> You spent a week trying to fix something that had you asked a question in
> an online forum, you probably could've gotten an answer for in a day or
> two.
>
> And then you complained that you couldn't figure it out.
>
> Yeah, ultimately, you gave up without asking for help.  If you'd asked
> for help, someone probably would've been able to help you.

1. You're assuming that it's /possible/ to fix this.

2. You're assuming that had I asked, somebody would have actually 
bothered to reply. And that their reply would have been helpful.

>> Again, I didn't say Linux sucks. I said one specific aspect of it sucks.
>
> An aspect you didn't ask any questions about, but beat your head against
> the desk for a week without asking for help.

We seem to be crossed here slightly. (For amusement, go compute what 
time of day it was in my time zone when I wrote this...)

I spent a week trying to fix my dad's failed OpenSUSE upgrade. The 
statement above was referring to the granularity of dependency 
management, which is a different topic.

>> Now, to me, if the only way to make a system work is to find a
>> super-expert to explain it, then it's not a very good system. If only
>> the distribution developers themselves have enough insider knowledge to
>> figure out how to work the package manager, then it's not a terribly
>> good system. Just, you know, my opinion. Feel free to disagree...
>
> You don't need a super expert to explain it.  You need someone with more
> knowledge than you have to explain it.  Plenty of normal everyday non-
> technical end users manage to use it without problems.

As I say, I can get Linux to /work/ OK. Indeed, my dad still uses it on 
a daily basis. It's just that one or two things - like getting the 
package manager to install just the packages I actually need - are 
annoyingly fiddly.

Post a reply to this message

On 09/10/2011 02:00 AM, Darren New wrote:

> I still giggle when I see someone using a gui in Linux to do things like
> find files. Just because I'm so used to the command line (and GUIs for
> Linux tend to suck horribly compared to something where it's the
> expected interface) that it looks silly to me.

In my humble opinion, if you need to *search* for a file on your local 
system, you're doing something horribly wrong...

Post a reply to this message

On 09/10/2011 02:03 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:

> find or locate does the job just fine, and beagle
> and its successors are just resource pigs.

And yet, everybody seems to think that Beagle and similar should be 
installed and enabled by default on every desktop system. It's usually 
one of the first things I go to uninstall. (But then of course, it 
complains about all the other stuff that won't work any more...)

> Though I find that the state of Linux GUIs is improving.  Certainly has
> since I started using it.

Linux GUIs used to suck horribly. Now they're mostly reasonable, but 
usually not as good as a typical Windows program. (There are of course 
many individual exceptions to this generalisation...)

Post a reply to this message

>> Oh, tremendously. But they're still a PITA compared to Windows'
>> explorer, methinks.
>
> Depends entirely on what you're used to.

Not /entirely/, no. Many things are subjective, but not all of them.

> Having recently been asked to do some work that requires Windows, I've
> had my own frustrations with the Windows interface and things that don't
> work as efficiently on Windows as they do in Linux.

My favourite one is how inserting a CD is enough to completely lock up 
the entire Windows GUI. Or how if your DHCP server doesn't answer, 
Windows locks up until that times out. Or...

> The same is true for comparing featuresets between Hyper-V and VMware
> Workstation.  For example, in Hyper-V, if you "pause" a machine, it stays
> allocated in memory rather than suspending.  "Pause" means "suspend
> execution".
>
> In VMware, if you "pause" the VM, VMware grabs the state and commits it
> to disk, freeing up the memory for other VMs.  I find VMware's usage
> makes a lot more sense.

Personally, I'd prefer having two separate buttons for these functions. 
Sometimes I just want to pause a VM just for a sec so I can use the CPU 
power for something else. So I hit pause in VMware, and facepalm as I 
have to wait ten minutes for it to trash the hell out of my HD. The 
/entire/ computer is unusable until this finishes. And when I decide to 
unpause the VM, we go through the same dance again.

Also fun: Pausing a VM makes the display go away. So it's useless if 
you're trying to quickly pause the display so you can *read* that error 
message that flashes past too fast to see...

Post a reply to this message

>>> Microsoft never did, that was an Amiga error code.
>>
>> I know. And I always thought it was a really weird name...
>
> So did I.  For that matter, I still do. :)

Also, it contains far less information than a STOP message does. 
Basically an error code (plus textual translation) and a memory address. 
Good luck working out, say, what was *at* that address or anything...

Post a reply to this message

On 09/10/2011 10:00 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:

> The point was that Andy said that binary blob data could be stored in the
> registry and not a Linux configuration file.  Point is, it could be
> stored in a Linux data file, but since it's common to change
> configuration items with an editor in Linux, it's not common to use a
> binary format (though the timezone file is an exception to that IIRC).

The point being, if you want to store some binary data in the middle of 
a textual configuration file, you have to base64 encode it or something 
(which is less efficient). If you want to stick some binary data in the 
registry, you can just store it as binary.

The next question is obviously "why would you want to do this?"

Obviously you shouldn't be storing /large/ amounts of opaque binary 
data. That kinda defeats the whole point. But things like hashed 
passwords, cryptographic data, product keys, etc are all reasonable 
examples.

Post a reply to this message

On 09/10/2011 10:39 PM, Darren New wrote:

> (Actually, I still giggle that I had a
> co-worker who had installed and uninstalled so much experimental crap on
> his machine that he got a yellow-on-grey-screen-of-death every time he
> logged out.)

Dude, that's *special*.

Although, if you're feeling left out, SysInternals has a tool to allow 
you to set the colours of a regular BSOD to be anything you want...

Post a reply to this message

On 07/10/2011 11:53 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 10/7/2011 15:04, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> No - that's just poor program design. Everybody has that... ;-)
>
> Actually, I think it stems from programmers targeting in-house experts.

Targeting a program at somebody other than who your eventual users are 
going to be? Yes, that would be... "poor design". :-)

Or, if you wanted to be particularly generous, "feature creep"...

Post a reply to this message

>> So, just because it does strong authentication, you think that means the
>> actual data is encrypted?
>
> It's actually a certificate verification message, not a 'strong
> authentication' message.  It's asking about an SSL certificate that's
> used to encrypt the entire communications channel.
>
> You know, like actual security.

Fact: It doesn't matter how strong the authentication process is. This 
does not automatically mean that the data that follows is encrypted in 
any way at all.

> Don't believe me?  Fine, I'll do a wireshark trace on it.
>
> Nope, 1200 packets, nothing in the clear.

And how do you tell whether random binary data is encrypted or not?

> "128-bit encryption, using the RC4 encryption algorithm, as of Version 6.

RC4? Man, how ancient is that? You realise it was a weakness in RC4 that 
allowed WEP to be broken, right?

> Nope, I guess you're right.  Adding 128-bit encryption isn't security.

Fact: The number of bits in the encryption key is not directly related 
to how secure the encryption is. Triple DES has a 168-bit key, and it's 
widely considered far too insecure to use.

> "Support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 on both server and client
> ends (set as default)."

Now that's more like it.

(Sadly, on further investigation, it appears that TLS 1 still uses RC4 
or Triple-DES. So much for HTTPS being secure...)

> Clearly I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

I'm still left wondering how many of these features are actually turned 
on by default. Every Windows protocol I know of sends everything 
unencrypted by default, and most of them offer no possibility of adding 
encryption. I'd be rather surprised if RDP is different.

> Oh, and I pointed you at an SSH server for Windows.  It comes with Cygwin.

Right. I didn't know about that when I set this up.

Post a reply to this message

>>> Why do you need that? All that sort of thing is built into Windows.
>>
>> Really? So how do I create an encrypted video connection to the target
>> machine, while at the same time preventing anybody else from doing the
>> same?
>
> Have your target go to the help center and send you an email for "remote
> assistance", and have them tell you the password over the phone. (You
> might have to have them turn on "cp->system->remote->allow remote
> assistance" if they've turned it off.)
>
> If you have a non-"home" version of Windows, set up Remote Desktop,
> which is in controlpanel->system->remote settings->remote->allow remote
> desktop. Of course, once they've done the former, you can remote in and
> do the latter for them.
>
> HTH!

Have you ever tried explaining all that over the phone to somebody who 
can't even work a mouse properly yet?

Of course, you would also need to poke a hole in the firewall for that 
to work. And make sure I edit whatever settings it is necessary to turn 
on encryption. And add a secure password. (The current admin password on 
the machine is trivially breakable.)

...or I could set up a *real* VPN, which is *actually* secure...

Post a reply to this message