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A Lindows short story
Last week's article about Lindows inspired
some comment. Even though the article stated, "It goes without
saying that LindowsOS does not prevent security conscious users from
setting up user accounts and passwords.", the perception exists that
LindowsOS runs everything as root. That may have been true in version 1.0,
but it is not true now.
The following story, subtitled Lindows saves the vacation is a true story, told to me by LWN co-founder Elizabeth Coolbaugh (Liz). Liz was going on a vacation with both her mother and her daughter. Three generations embarking on a trip to meet relatives in Europe. The night before she planned to leave there was a power outage in Liz's neighborhood. Since she was already packed she took her daughter and headed to her parents house early. Only when she arrived she realized that an email with vital information was still on the mail server and had not been printed or copied. Lindows to the rescue. Liz's father had just bought a brand new Lindows computer. He had usernames set up on the system because during setup he was told to do so. He set up a username for Liz and used Click-and-Run to find and install OpenSSH. Liz got to the mail server and found the email and the information contained therein. So I, like most of you, have never run Lindows, but I do have it on good authority that setting up usernames and not running everything as root is the default behaviour for the current product. (Log in to post comments)
A Lindows short story Posted Jul 3, 2003 15:10 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] I really appeciate that you posted this correction without being asked by Lindows or anybody else. That's responsible and shows that you really care to inform your readership. I'll have no doubts when the time comes to subscribe to LWN for the next year.
A Lindows short story Posted Jul 3, 2003 15:26 UTC (Thu) by cdmiller (subscriber, #2813) [Link] Sounds like Lindows could be worth another look. I had written it off after reading about version 1.0.
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