🚀 go-pugleaf

In message <20080705150255.1d79d868@realh.co.uk> Tony Houghton
<h@realh.co.uk> wrote:

>On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:57:25 -0600
>DevilsPGD <spam_narf_spam@crazyhat.net> wrote:
>
>> In message <20080703152156.3be21d10@realh.co.uk> Tony Houghton
>> <h@realh.co.uk> wrote:
>> 
>> >but many mainstream magazines are telling them
>> >to avoid Vista, which is what they'll be forced to have if they buy
>> >an off-the-shelf PC.
>> 
>> Okay.  So how would bundling a random distribution help?
>
>It wouldn't, but your argument against it seemed to be that you don't
>want anybody to be force-fed an OS they don't want, so I pointed out
>that most people already are.

And most of those are buying an off the shelf system anyway, so they'll
never see what the manufacturer included in the box, so it's a moot
point.

I still say the number of people capable of building systems, but not
capable of downloading and burning a LiveCD is infinitesimal at best.

>No, you install Windows with the network drivers missing and use the
>Live CD to download the missing drivers onto your Windows drive, then
>reboot Windows to complete the installation.

Or, install Windows with outdated network drivers from CD, get online,
the download and install the latest drivers.

This is a heck of a lot less effort then getting a LiveCD to boot after
Windows is finished just to run an outdated driver (the LiveCD's drivers
will be just as outdated as anything on the Windows driver CD) only to
download the latest drivers from there.

Using a LiveCD is a solution looking for a problem.

>I suppose I put that bit after the wrong paragraph. Or can't you see any
>connection between a driver that disables USB mass storage and a driver
>that disables USB mass storage? It has potential to go wrong.

Well no.  The driver doesn't disable USB mass storage at all, rather,
the hardware mounts as two devices, a generic CD drive *and* a EVDO
card.  When the EVDO card is initialized, the CD drive is unmounted by
the hardware.

The actual functionality of the card is available at all times, you
don't even need the real driver installed if you configure the card via
the virtual COM port interface.  Only the "driver" component disappears,
so even if something goes wrong, you just hit the manufacturer's website
and move on.

One of the big perks of this system is that the drivers are
self-updating.  You update the driver from the internet, it updates the
drivers on the card, then you reinstall Windows or switch to a new PC,
the card installs the latest drivers on the PC automatically.

>There's a famous anecdote of someone that wanted to get rid of some old,
>but still just about serviceable tyres. When they were still on his
>drive after being there for a week with a sign saying, "Free, help
>yourself," he changed the sign to "�10" and they disappeared the
>following night.

Good analogy, except that Linux is available both for free AND for sale.
Not even Walmart could sell hardware with Linux preinstalled.

Also consider that as you mentioned before, when buying prebuilt
systems, users get Windows whether they want it or not.  As a result,
it's effectively a freebie.

>> Wandering around any public place looking at all the MacBooks people
>> are using, go find one that isn't running Windows (Either in bootcamp
>> or parallels, or something similar) -- About 40% of my friends and
>> family circles who own a laptop own a Macbook, every single one, bar
>> none, has Windows.  A little over 50% use Windows as their primary
>> OS, with a small percentage running Linux, the rest on OSX.
>
>Is that really typical? I'm surprised. 

It is across my particular cross-section of MacBook users.  Apple does
make some damn nice hardware.

>If you believe that the lack of Linux malware is only because it's not
>worth attacking, what about Internet servers? Linux has the majority market
>share in that market and surely all those machines with fast connections
>and high capacity mail software already set up would make a very
>attractive target for spambots.

Most Internet facing servers are moderately well configured, and are a
higher barrier to entry.  Even in the desktop world, the vast majority
of compromised machines weren't compromised remotely, they were
compromised by tricking a user into accessing a compromised resource,
and a huge percentage of the time, the user was warned something risky
was happening but authorized it anyway.

On servers, there is no user running a webbrowser, so the attack surface
is different, hence the attacks against PHP scripts, SQL injections and
other very well publicized attacks of late against servers on nearly
every modern server platform, although almost exclusively due to code
the user added after the fact, not the base OS install.