Linux is easier to install than XP

Practical Technology for practical people ^ | 7/22/08 | Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

[Knitebane]

There you go again assuming the hardware is identical to the function. Ethernet is a known quantity, Dell’s specific implementation of ethernet is NOT.

Fair enough. I will point out again that the virtual test was IN ADDITION TO the real OS on real hardware problems that were seen in the article and on numerous web forums.

It is an additional data point, showing that Windows XP refuses to recognize a well documented, well understood Ethernet implementation.

To sum up:

Real Dell hardware, Intel EtherPro chip:

Current version of Linux Mint - OK
Most current version of Windows XP (SP3) - FAIL

Other, various hardware, Intel EtherPro chip:

Current versions of Linux - OK
2002 version of Linux - OK
Most current version of Windows XP (SP3) - FAIL

Virtual hardware, emulated Intel EtherPro chip:

Current versions of Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD - OK
2002 version of Linux - OK
Most current version of Windows XP (SP3) - FAIL

See the pattern?

[N3WBI3]

Depends on what youre doing, Ive had to do some damn awful registry crap on windows in the past and the fact I could use a mouse to do it made it no more intuitive..

Most distros now have gui’s for common task that will pop up a box asking for the root password (sorta like windows or osx)

[boogerbear]

Your “data point” and the article’s have no relationship to each other. All we’ve got from the article is that XP doesn’t have drivers for some newer hardware, something I never disputed, the only part I dispute is the author and you using newer Linuxes than XP and thinking it has any meaning.

Then we have you putting stuff on virtual machines and not getting hardware detected. Completely unrelated concepts, lends nothing to the original discussion.

[Knitebane]

All we’ve got from the article is that XP doesn’t have drivers for some newer hardware,

It's not newer hardware. It's ancient hardware.

the only part I dispute is the author and you using newer Linuxes than XP and thinking it has any meaning.

Even though I've pointed out (several times) that older Linuxes see the same "new" hardware just fine.

Then we have you putting stuff on virtual machines and not getting hardware detected. Completely unrelated concepts, lends nothing to the original discussion.

It does show a remarkable consistency of Windows XP (SP3) to not detect an Intel EtherPro chip, regardless of whether it is real or virtual.

[boogerbear]

Look we had this argument yesterday, you’ve now looped it all back around to the beginning. Look up the answers I already gave. He’s wrong. You’re wrong. The test is BS. We’re done. Bye.

[zeugma]

Sorry, but Linux is not for everyone.

Judging by all the botnets out there, neither is MS-Windows.

[Still Thinking]

Actually most Windows drivers are pretty small, in the same range as Linux drivers. The difference is that with Windows the company will also generally ship some sort of configuration utility (which 99% of the time is completely useless) which has all that GUI overhead and gives you megabytes of stuff. But the ACTUAL driver, the part that’s needed, is tiny.And a lot of times they do it an a very high handed arrogant manner. One time I was in a customers plant and needed to print something. He had good internet access so I went to the Epson website and downloaded the 65MB or whatever "driver" and installed it. So of course, without giving you the option to decline, it installs all of its crapware. So I just uninstall it, figuring only the "utility" will be deleted. Wrong. Deleted the driver as well! Couldn't find any way to install the driver without the program or delete the program without the driver. I eventually found a way, and the way I usually do this now is to install it on another machine where I don't care about the crapware (sometimes in a VM which will be reverted to pre-crapware as soon as I'm done), set up the printer as a network printer, then attach to that printer from the machine I really want to use, opting in Windows printer setup to import the driver to the local machine. This imports just the driver, leaving the crapware, and then you can delete the garbage off the other machine. Just pisses me off that due to their arrogance, you have to go to these lengths to run the part of software that they actually owe you. Have the same problem with a Brother all-in-one that I bought. It is networked (wifi even) and will store received faxes internally and if you install and run their crapware on a PC in the network, you can download and save the faxes and scans on that machine. Why the crapware? Why isn't the internal memory of the machine simply set up as a shared drive? I can see the machine on the network. Why not leverage existing Windows services and instead force me to load software that bogs down my computer and contains who knows what? It also makes me suspicious of the intent of the software if they went to all the trouble to write it when everything that it supposedly does could be done with Windows networking services you already have.

[Still Thinking]

Sorry about the lack of paragraphs. I forgot I used html for the italics so FR ignored all my 'ed paragraphs.

[boogerbear]

Most companies seem to operate under the assumption that their software is the only software you’re going to run on this machine. So it’s OK if they totally take over the machine.

Just look at multi-media software. They all want to have all the various media formats default to going through them, even the ones they can’t actually run well (I’ve lost track of how many media packages I’ve seen that can’t open Quicktime files but still want .mov to go to them), they all want these stupid little TSR in your startup to make it “faster” when they open files, they all operate from a theory that you have no other media software on your computer so of course you want them to do everything for you.

[Still Thinking]

Yeah, I would agree with all that.

But like in the case of the AIO, when they supply software to do the same thing that could be done with nothing more than simple networking already in place, the needle on my chicanery meter starts twitching.

[boogerbear]

They all love to do that though. There’s always been good money in doing something the OS already does. Remember back in the DOS days there were half a dozen apps that did nothing more than tweak your config.sys and autoexec to use himem and free up space in the lower 640. None of them did anything that you couldn’t do in Edit for yourself, none of them even did it any better than a halfway experienced geek could, but the all made these products. And some of them made money at it. There’s always a market for a slightly better UI, or even a quicker to find but otherwise identical UI.

[JerseyHighlander]

HP has a proprietary printer job language called “HP LaserJet” usually, and you have to download the software package that includes the language.

Most (if not all) robust Linux installs come with the open sourced HP Laserjet printer language package included.

relictele, the hundreds of megabytes isn’t an exaggeration, if you are coming off a clean SP2 install as of May 19th 2008 it would take 680ish MBs to update all of the patches. That took me an hour and a half on high speed cable internet. I remember the date because it took me all day to update the dang system.

I still prefer XP for daily use, but I prefer to use the NLite competitor, called RVM_Integrator. That and weekly backups using Acronis TrueImage.

[ShadowAce]

Share?

Sure--it's gotta wait until this weekend, though. I won't get home until late tomorrow night. Then I'm off to another install on Monday.

[zeugma]

 Sorry about the lack of paragraphs. I forgot I used html for the italics so FR ignored all my 'ed paragraphs.

 

do you use Firefox? If so, "Xinha Here" is a great extension for posting to FR!

[bcsco]

So in other words: You run your XP and W2K systems as Administrator or a user a user with Administrator rights. Either way, that is not considered "best practice" from a security point of view. Any malicious code that you could encounter on-line will have full access to your system.

You know, I thought about what you wrote here, and decided to make some changes. I added a user account that had full administrative rights. I then changed my user account to "restricted". Guess what. I could no longer print to my printer when logged in on my account. The printer works fine though in the new administrator account I opened.

I thought I'd change my personal account to "standard" instead of "restricted". Can't do that. There is no option for a Group name named "standard". "Administrator" and "Restricted" are the only two groups to which I can add new users.

So, I'm back to square one. I system restored to where I was before making the changes. If you have any suggestions on how to get around such issues I'd really appreciate hearing them (I've been all over the place online but searches don't address this specific matter...that I can find). But you really came across with some criticism ("If it is too inconvenient for you..." or "...and don't care about the info it contains getting into the wrong hands"...). And here I try to take your opinion constructively and it gets me nowhere; well, worse than nowhere.

I'd say thanks, but I'm not sure for what. But I will say, be careful of what you recommend so blithely. You can potentially wreak havoc without intending to. Fortunately, I didn't let it get away from me.

[AFreeBird]

Um, the Administrator account ( or I guess in XP it's called the "owner" is for administering the system and other accounts. Resources on a system typically have an ACL or access control list associated with them. "Rights" is a more simplistic term.

Since you changed the rights of the owner account (the one you created when the system was new), then the rights enjoyed by said account no longer apply since the resources (like printers) were set up with your account in mind. You essentially locked yourself out.

Now, since you changed your "owner" account back, everything works fine.

Administering a system is not trivial (I started in 1985 with NetWare), and I did not mean to imply that it was, nor was I going to be able to explain it to you in the confines of the thread.

I'm sorry for your temporary troubles but you did very well in creating a user with admin rights. You created a "back door"!

The basic premise of my threads was to get you to think about, and RESEARCH, for yourself, the ins and outs of a multi-user system and the security of said system. And whether or not multiple users use your particular system (individually or at the same time), or it's just you, it is still a multi-user system and the ACl still applies.

In XP and below (don't ask me about Vista) you have, via the control panel applet "Users & Groups" to create users AND groups. You can create any damn groups you want to and add any or all users to said group(s). And you can then tell the various resources on your system (files, directories, printers etc.,) that certain users and or groups have the right to use, read, write, delete, modify, control... whatever said resource.

So take one of your newly created accounts, make it a restricted account, and then find your printer in control panel and right click on it and go into properties and look for "sharing". In there you will be able to select users and or groups that can access said resource, and to what degree. You can also do that with your home directory or sub-directories therein. Windows, Documents and settings (if memory serves) In linux it's /home; NetWare \USERS

So find your current account directory and right click on a directory or "Folder" and goto properties and find "sharing" Give the restricted account rights said directory (or file or whatever), then log in as that account and access the resource you gave it permission to access.

Se what happens. Play around with it. I would also suggest looking into either online or at Borders, a book or tutorial on basic Windows system administration for a multi-user system.

The lessons/concepts you learn there will carry over to just about any and all systems you are likely to encounter. The specifics of how its done may differ from system to system, but the concepts are pretty much universal.

And they're "Best Practices"!

So great job on thinking about it, trying it, and then reporting back on how it didn't work. You're now way further along than the vast majority of Windows users.

Once you've researched and played around with it more, you will come to understand why us old SysAdmins get our knickers in a twist over this issue with the uninitiated.

[boogerbear]

Welcome to reality. Security is a pain in the butt. Yes if you run under a user with non-administrative privileges you have to spend some time tweaking the permissions so you can do stuff like access printers (that’s what you need to do with your restricted account, give it permission on the printer, probably in the printer properties or printer share). And you have to do things like login as a different account to run installs. Of course on the other side of it you don’t have permission to accidentally install viruses, and you probably don’t have permissions for trap websites to plant spyware.

Security in computers is just like security in the real world. Annoying but necessary. If you lock a door you can’t get back through without a key. If you lock the registry you can’t get in without the right account. If you’re going to run wide open (logged in as admin) you need to be careful, and lucky.

[Big Giant Head]

bcsco, I had the same difficulties with Ubuntu. I stumbled upon PCLinuxOS 2007. It’s great. I’ve never had to enter any coding to get anything to run.

2007 is getting a bit long in the tooth, as there’s a newer kernel out and lots of new updates, but there’s MiniMe 2008, which is a stripped down version. Load only what you want from the repositories. There’s TinyMe, Sam Linux, etc. all based on PCLinuxOS. There’s supposed to be a newer version of 2007 coming out sometime this year.

Your problems with Ubuntu mirrored my own. I deleted it and went back to Windows for a good while. PCLinuxOS is good enough to get me to wipe Windows. Everything works. If I didn’t use Microsoft Flight sim, I’d not need any windows at all.

[AFreeBird]

If I didn’t use Microsoft Flight sim, I’d not need any windows at all.

Look into Flight Gear.

Binaries/Source available for:

Windows
Linux
Mac OS X
Solaris (sparc/x86)
sgi
FreeBSD

Perhaps not as polished as FS (yet) but getting there.

[bcsco]

Now, since you changed your "owner" account back, everything works fine.

What I didn't add in my post was that I deleted the printer and reinstalled it in the new administrator account, AND made it a share. Oops! It still wouldn't work in my original account. I'd print something (as restricted user) to it while the print queue window was open. The file to print would appear and begin spooling, then it would suddenly disappear. That's when I finally gave up and went back to square one.

In XP and below (don't ask me about Vista) you have, via the control panel applet "Users & Groups" to create users AND groups. You can create any damn groups you want to and add any or all users to said group(s).

Nope. When I go to Control Panel the only related option is User Accounts. I even went and ran Control Userpasswords2. When I'd click on a user then try to change group membership from "Restricted" to "Standard" I'd get an error message saying no such group name exists. I can find nowhere where I'm allowed to add/edit/delete groups. Nowhere. I even tried Tweak UI under "Logon". Nothing there to help. I then went to add/remove Windows Components. I searched to see if my installation was short something. Nope. Nothing that jumped out as contributing to this. So no, I can't do all this stuff.

So find your current account directory and right click on a directory or "Folder" and goto properties and find "sharing" Give the restricted account rights said directory (or file or whatever), then log in as that account and access the resource you gave it permission to access.

Nope. As stated above it doesn't work. As for giving rights to users, there's nothing available on the tabs to do that. Oh, I've seen that alright in Windows 2000. I've done it often there. But not here. Sorry.

I have two PC's networked with shared directories and printers. No problem over the network at all. I can print & share files between my Windows XP laptop to my Windows 2000 tower and vice versa. Each has a shared printer attached and each works flawlessly over the network. But the printer attached to this laptop with Windows XP will NOT work in a restricted account. No way no how.

Thanks for the advice, but I've been ahead of what you've told me. I may not have your credentials but I'm not a flake nor a newbie by any means.