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Vista Aiding Linux Desktop, Strategist Says (eWeek)
Vista Aiding Linux Desktop, Strategist Says (eWeek)
Posted Aug 10, 2007 10:18 UTC (Fri) by alecs1 (guest, #46699)Parent article: Vista Aiding Linux Desktop, Strategist Says (eWeek)
Though I prefer Linux (I am biased towards open-source and I love KDE and package management) there is a couple of things I know about Windows, and I use it very well.
With Windows NT it is not necesarily to be root (adminstrator) to have 95% of the functionality (you can't burn disks, some programs will not install). With add-ons you can burn disks, most programs, notably the open-source ones will install anywhere. Thus, your OS-es life will increase a lot. If you think the registry slows you down, create a new user (in 2.5 years of running Windows 2003 on desktop I never had to reinstall or create a new user). Also many programs feel faster on Windows.
This is indeed a good change for the Linux desktop.
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Vista Aiding Linux Desktop, Strategist Says (eWeek)
Posted Aug 11, 2007 19:28 UTC (Sat) by dlang (subscriber, #313) [Link]
linux has never required you to be root to get your functionality. the closest issue is that some specific functions are restricted to root, but there are well documented tools and techniques to deal with these (from sudo to suid bits)
so your statement that Linux should learn from windows here is backwords. windows needs to learn from linux how to get that other 5% of functionality safely.
Linux brain damage *does* exist
Posted Aug 14, 2007 16:13 UTC (Tue) by dps (subscriber, #5725) [Link]
Vista apparently did not drink some of the linux-kool aid. Under linux the system call you need to format a floppy is priviledged, so fdformat has to be setuid root. Arguably this is the wrong thing. Far too many race conditions and security exploits have occured due to the use of set[gu]id bits to work around kernel misfeatures.
That said there is plently of vista kool aid that does not feature on linux or similar systems. One of them IMHO is a window manager that can not be replaced and implements all my pet hates and very thin documentation on the security settings. The requirement to run a graphical desktop even on headles and handleless servers is also silly.
While you *can* install X11 fonts and so forth without root permissions you have to do this manualy. If you want to use dpkg or apt-get then you must be root.