Um... this will happen all the time!

You access some resources on your corporate network from your laptop. To do this, you have configured an application to talk to the server. That server happens to have the name whizzy.corp.

So far, no biggy. IF you launch the application and you are not at work, whizzy.corp doesn't resolve. For example, at your local starbucks, BEFORE you open your VLAN.

What happens when .corp is assigned? Suddenly whizzy.corp is now a machine on he internet. Say the application is your corporate IM system.

(I would imagine that names like exchange.corp would be very hot items).

For this reason, the recommendation is that .corp, .home and .mail be reserved.

I would like all the RFC 6762 names to be reserved (.intranet, .private, .lan, .internal as well).

Of course, startup applications on laptops COULD be locked down, along with a strict no-byod policy, thereby eliminating these issues... maybe. If your company supports a VLAN, they may well arise anyway. This CAN be made to work, but I am (fairly sure) that most users wouldn't like it.

Why do you mention Linux? This sub-thread compared Windows against z/OS. The "market share" for z/OS as a general compute device is, of course, even less than Linux. However, z/OS is arguably much more secure than Windows.

Why is it that Windows criticism is taken as Linux support? Linux has its place (and I use it as my primary OS) but I certainly wouldn't claim it is secure. Windows should be secure, given that it is pre-installed on almost every consumer computing product.

I used to subscribe to Cable TV and Cable Internet.

My supplier (Rogers) managed to piss me off. So badly, in fact, with required service (6 years ago). That I told them to cancel. Indeed, they had strung "temporary" wires over my property -- for two years.

They were warned. No easement to string that wire.

I took shears and removed the wire A real "cable cutting".

Combine this drone with the phone/tablet killswitch and much hilarity can be had!

- or -

A new sport. After all, skeets can't dodge, and mailboxes are just too easy a target... Highway drone shooting!

---

I used to think /.'s biggest problem was dups! Now we've got BETA -- and I promise to NEVER complain about dups again!
 

First, "rwx" works for most use cases.

Second, ACLs were in Redhat AS3, which puts it back to 2003.

I'll even concede that Windows is secure now. But, my opinion is that it should be! (given how much it costs). My experience is with Unix.

Pretty much 24/7 people come a-knockin' at SSH. Trying user/password combinations. Quickly (which gets them blackholed) or slowly.

Even my Linux XBMC box gets thousands of attempts a day.

I imagine that Windows gets it worse. Using a small percentage OS that covers the functions I need? Is a good thing. Sure, obscurity isn't security, but I do know how to harden the boxes I deploy. At least to the level needed.

Windows needs to be a whole lot "harder" out of the box. People get it on new computers. I know I do! People with no knowledge or experience in security.
Who want to "download" and gleefully poke holes in the router. At least, until a standard was devised to allow programs I consider untrusted to do the poking for them. Then, to find exploits in those routers... possibly (wearing a black hat) allowing snooping of local traffic, and injection of bad packets. Why not?

Still not going to bother me any, and, no, I don't bother with ACLs in most circumstances. Simply, by the time the ACL would help is far too late anyway.

If I control your router, and your router attached storage, I really don't care about your computer anymore.

Which brings us back to Linux and BSD. And, our aforementioned group that simply deploys with no deeper understanding.

I am very glad that Microsoft has made money. I have a financial interest in them (no, I don't have a stake in Redhat).

Why? Microsoft gets to move a unit of Windows for just about every home PC. (I bought some Acer Veriton 282G units that didn't come with Windows, but, in general, this hold true).

I would prefer that my Fedora/whatever boxes remain somewhat obscure. I would like router vendors to be more open (specifically, support flashing third party firmware without voiding hardware guarantees).

Rant is over. Resume your regular /. read.

Actually, the reasons I use Linux are:

1 - Xeyes over the network. And that IS more important to me than "competition".

In fact, my Xeyes application(s) don't run on Windows, Android or Mac. They run on AIX, Solaris and Redhat. Different hardware and OSs. The common GUI IS X11. Which makes this very important... I have tried Cygwin on Windows -- and, I guess it would do... but THAT is what "Linux" is competing with FOR ME.

2 - A platform for POSIX applications.

3 - Hey, I am not bashing Windows, Android or Mac. Don't get in my grill and bash X/POSIX and my needs

4 - I do need "office applications". Since I have NEVER used Windows XP or Microsoft Office I am very adept at the tools I use. That they happen to be no-cost and libre? My benefit. Yes, I have used OpenOffice right back to when it was Star Office. Evolution, Mozilla/Firefox. When I attempt comparing my tools against Windows/MS Office/IE, the Microsoft tools fall short. Why? Because for ME, my tools are the "gold standard". For Microsoft users, the Microsoft tools are the "gold standard". Any deviation makes us uncomfortable.

5 - Sure, I will adopt another "paradigm". About the same time that AIX, Solaris, HP-UX and Redhat do. Or those platforms die.

I agree, we do not think alike. That is why I am in the minority, and use Linux. If Linux discards X or Posix, I would have to see if OpenOffice, Evolution and Firefox supported one of the BSDs and move to that platform. My needs... Why do I need douches complaining that *MY NEEDS* are minority when I am already using a *MINORITY* platform specifically BECAUSE it meets my needs! In disclosure, I hold Microsoft shares. I don't have a position in Redhat or Apple (at this time).

So, my needs are not important, even when *I* try to steer my minority platform to support them. I am not suggesting that Windows, Mac or Android go that way. It is obvious that Xeyes isn't a priority for you.

Now, I use xfce. With compositing. I was curious as to the applications on my laptop that wouldn't "remote" properly - smplayer, and audio, because of pulseaudio. All of my other applications are "remoteable". All the GUI applications are my Solaris, AIX and HP-UX systems are useable. RDP/VNC support? I guess... but the GUI *is* X.

I don't particularly like "systemd" either. Prefer sysvinit. Why? Makes Linux closer to the other OSs I use. However, I can tolerate that change because it is internal to my terminal ONLY.

Of course.

A year ago, I had an altercation with a car. Split my right femur. Car drivers fault.

Safer? Embed glass in the dashboard of cars, no airbags, no seatbelts. Force car drivers to pay attention.

Because, honestly, bikes are not the problem -- cars are.

Cars get their own highways, and, as a cyclist, I am forced to share non-highway roads. Average speed through my city? 27 kmph. So, reducing the speed from 60 kmph to 50 kmph would also help (and, as a car driver, there is still the choice to go 100 kmph on the highway!).

Not true. There are organizations that specialize in migrations, and the per-week costs are no where near 10,000/consultant.

But... the grandparent poster DIDN'T put a windowing system on the server!

virt-manager is a pretty simple X client, and the GUI is solely on your workstation. No GUI on the server at all. And, if that's what YOU do, you also don't have a GUI on the server:

[myworkstation] $ ssh -X myname@myserver
[myserver] $ virt-manager ... and virt-manager appears in a window on your workstation.

clicky, clicky, happy.

Folks - that's ALL there is to it. Except... myserver can be something completely different - A Solaris box, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX.

But, we get farther away... The Solaris application that has it's display on my workstation cannot use notifications (which should have been designed as an X extension, but the kids didn't know...). XBell seems to be deprecated. Without hackery, the xterm (that may be running on that AIX box) can't make a sound on my workstation (using that newfangled "pulse" thing). It can be hacked to work, though.

RDP? Will that help me? Probably not -- I don't log in to a single system that supports RDP.

Local X clients on my workstation can do fancier stuff, off course. But all the applications render to my X server, and the compositing happens locally, anyway. My Solaris and AIX X applications can push bitmaps, but they generally don't. Those applications really don't care.

The biggest problems with X today? Notifications. Other crap that uses other inter-application communications (like DBUS) instead of X. Deprecation of XBell. Network sound that is far too complicated.

If it takes "Wayland" to solve this, make sure that there is a simple proxy that can easily be deployed that lets me use those X applications. However, that doesn't fix my X issues, and just adds an additional layer.

How does this stack up? About the same as if I run an X Server (say Hummingbird, or Cygwin) on a Windows workstation. Interesting, that...the PRIMARY reason I (personally) run Linux as a workstation OS is to allow me to use an X Server as my primary display.

If that were not the case, I would just leave Windows (whatever version) on my workstation, and start from there.

Well... that and being able to simply recompile my code to run on the workstation or the servers as appropriate. I generally use Tk as a GUI for applications anyway (at least for one-off apps).

Now you've gone and done it!

I am off building an ARM to Atom binary compiler, and see what that gives.

To move the cursor with a touchpad, you "swipe" in a direction.

You need to move the cursor to select with a mouse or a touchpad. On your iPad ("iTouch"??), you just touch; there is no need to move the cursor.

Which means swipe is separate from move on the "iTouch", and is not on the authors system (may be the system vendors configuration error, or Microsofts, or a driver issue, doesn't matter because it rendered the system unusable),

Gothmolly

Evolution works fine as a working Exchange client. Email, calendaring, notes, address book.

LibreOffice works as a "drop-in" (quoted because of below) replacement for Microsoft Office (INCLUDING VISIO).

Macros need conversation.

"Linux on the desktop" is viable. Won't be popular, anyway. Mostly because it will be rejected without further thought by most people.

Bold statement, there.

To rephrase (and it's really not stated clearly) - you don't think a Linux Vendor has produced a packaged Linux based OS that does not require a "command line".

Wrong.

- Android (Linux)
- Fedora (16, 17, and as far back as 8). Gnome or even XFCE (Linux)
- Mac OS X (BSD)

Now, I am glad that you qualified your statement with "that Windows has a button for". So that's two "Linux OSs", and one "BSD OS" over a bunch of versions.

I'm surprised about Ubuntu (not that I am all that aware of it).

It is clear that you consider command line usage a "flaw".

But, to supply a typical example: someone wanted to know how to change a user's UID and GID (Unix/Linux user id and group id). The answer?

Log in as root, and "vi /etc/passwd". Find and change the line referencing the user. "vi /etc/group" and do the same for the group.

Type "find / -uid 1000 -exec chown 2000:2000 '{}' \+"

to change ownership of the files from user uid 1000 to uid 2000 : gid 2000 (replace the numbers with your desired numbers).

It is fairly obvious that with a small amount of Unix lore, this administration task can be successfully completed. The instructions can be made even more specific, if needed. It is specific to Unix (Linux), and will only ever be needed by someone running NFS in a networked environment (or, possibly, running a license server). In other words, in an office/work environment by an experienced admin, or by a small fraction of home users (a very small fraction).

Is it worth making a button for this? I think the answer is NO. I wouldn't even know where to look for such a thing -- it would take more instructions on how to use it, as compared to "cut and paste into a terminal".

There is common stuff that I would find trivial under Unix (Linux) that I would have no idea how to approach under Windows.

Not CRITICAL stuff; just "nice to have". When I run across one, I just give my head a shake, and ignore it. I expect that you are the same with Linux.

The people who should be or are using Linux know why. I can't advocate change just for change. There must be some benefit.

It may be hardware support. It may be POSIX compliance. It may be performance related. It may be something completely different.

For example -- with 2 and 3TB consumer drives available, I usually recommend a scrubbing, redundant file system. Like ZFS. Of course, that requires Solaris, Linux, BSD or MAC OS X (and it was removed from OS X). Linux has more hardware support, so it would be the choice. At least for the file server. Or, use BSD for a home NAS.

A reason to use Unix!

Talk with the users. Find out what they are after. You can even sell them a service. I wouldn't transition "Joe or Josephine Random" from Microsoft Windows to Unix (Linux, BSD, Apple) without a discussion.

Sure

rpm --root
yum history rollback
yum history redo
yum downgrade
rpm -V (may be debsums?)
yum versionlock
yum --enablerepo --disablerepo
rpm --docfiles --configfiles
rpm/yum reporting is nicer

Only two commands rpm underneath and yum on top.

The GP tore a hole out of yum/rpm vs apt/deb. As you point out there really isn't much daylight between. Except that (as a non-administrator having to do occasional admin tasks) I find rpm superior.

First, yum is superior technically to debians packaging system. Not going to bother explaining, because I seriously doubt it would do any good.

Next, this idea of rebooting (technically, two boots - download updates, reboot into a small system, apply updates, reboot into complete environment) is an idea that won't matter much soon.

Hard drives are already in the 3TB territory. btrfs or zfs will become necessary for reliability. When this happens, snapshots will be available to solve the problem properly.

Now, why Redhat recommends re-install? Redhat really only sells servers. Best practice is to re-install to verify that nothing has been forgotten during an upgrade. This applies whether its AIX, Redhat, Solaris or even Windows.

Fedora? Supports preupgrade. Just updated from F16 to F17 with that. Note that /bin is now only symlinks to /usr/bin; a major filesystem layout change was included.

It just worked (originally installed from a Fedora XFCE live CD spin).