On the state of Windows on the desktop
brankovukelic.com
brankovukelic.com
Windows is free to download and try. You don't have to enter a product key - just hit next and add it if you decide to buy it. You get it for 30 days. Here is the URL if you want to try it (windows 7 x64 professional):
http://msft.digitalrivercontent.net/win/X17-59186.iso
There is a live CD but it's only used for recovery. There isn't much of a market for trying Windows.
Drivers. Windows update always handles these for me at least. I haven't had to bother with driver fiddling for years. Not only that, 99% of hardware I've worked with recently just works out of the box anyway.
Package manager. Yes there is - there is just no pick and place repository like Debian. You can get packages from Windows Update though. The package manager is called Windows Installer and the packages are MSI packages.
Everyone installs K Lite Codec Pack and media player classic these days (or VLC) almost as a first item to install. Same as you install win32-codecs on Linux.
Maildir import. You stick an IMAP server on your Linux box and copy all the shit to your PST.
I agree with your analysis though: there is a difference between parody and stupid, and this hits the latter. I've been building Win7 PC's for years and I haven't loaded to messed up graphics and no networking since before the friends and family beta. That was always a hallmark of WinXP, not 7.
The only thing I can think of is that he installed Win7 on 10 year old hardware and the drivers for such an antiquated setup weren't even included in the default set.
It's also possible that he grabbed a really old copy of Win7 with no service packs or updates baked in, which includes tons of driver updates.
However, and I run Ubuntu, Mint and Win7 on my machine, I can say that both found all of my drivers immediately and worked, although the Windows drivers are newer, more stable and more fully featured (I'm looking at you ATI).
"Always Up-to-date: A Ninite installer always gets an app's latest version no matter when you made it."
a) "Everyone installs K-lite" Wow yeah. Everyone who torrents. All the other poor fellas have no idea. And I personally know those other poor fellas and they could not tell you want a codec is if you put a gun to their heads. Hell, my wife is one.
b) I WISH there was a Windows 8 live CD. MS does not want you to "try windows" they want you committed.
c) Drivers. Ok I give you this one. For the most part windows 7 is ok. Gone are the windows XP days where if you didn't have a disk on you, you didn't have your network card drivers.
d) There is NO PACKAGE MANAGER! None, ZERO. Windows Installer as a package manager is like saying my Garage is a parking lot + valet. Windows installer (this atrocity that is...) is used to... INSTALL software. It's a glorified unzip. There is no way to say "oh hey windows installer, I'd really like to install ruby 1.9.3 with sources" and it would say "give me an hour". Instead you say "windows installer? hello? ok to google!"... "to google" can often lead an unexperience used like my grandfather to download spyware.
e) Well. At least windows can be downloaded now as a free unactivated copy. Gone are the days where I purchase a copy of windows only to find out I can't get a legal disk image of windows 7 stand-alone. Only some upgrade, which is not upgradable from windows xp 32 bit.
d) It does manage your software and you can use the package manager to remove software.
b) No there is just no value in it. 99% of PCs come with it preinstalled. Why would they bother to target a few Linux users.
d) Yes there is. Look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer - yes a fully transactional installation system. If you can work out which things not to put your penis in, then you can work out which web sites are trying to rip you off. Oh and they even bother to sign official packages and warn you if it looks dodgy.
b) I cannot agree more. However this is still a great parody as to the fact that getting even a sniff of windows is an effort in itself if you didn't have it installed.
d) Sorry, a unzip with rollback capabilities and upgrade tools. Still not close to apt / homebrew / etc. Look if windows installer didn't have the ability to say that MS Visual C++ distribution is a requirement for running this software, it would not be worth the space it takes on ur hard drive.
In any case. Let's do one with a linux user trying to install Mac OSX... Fast one
- Looks like I need to shell out 1000 dollars on a macbook air because there's no way to even try it out on my laptop without spending days making a "hackintosh"
To be fair, setting up a "hackintosh" install isn't really any harder than setting up Gentoo or Arch. It's not a very relevant comparison though; Unlike with Windows or Linux, the makers of OS X explicitly do not want people installing their OS on "PC" hardware.
Honestly, I haven't used windows(other than in VMs that is) since windows XP. When vista came out, I went "fuck that shit" and switched to ubuntu(then gentoo and eventually settled on Arch). Now my personal laptop is still running Arch and for work I use a macbook and an iMac(Hate the fact that you can't develop for iOS without OSX but meh, gotta be pragmatic).
TL;DR; I'm no expert but I guess they're trying to remedy that with the store thingy in Win8.
So the package repositories are nothing but convenience for the end-user.
Isn't conveniencing the end user kind of the goal of all software? Surely there is value in tracking dependencies and conflicts (and in avoiding problems that can arise without these things) that should not reasonably be dismissed as "nothing but convenience". Perhaps I could say the same of every useful thing you've worked on.
I'm not debating that nor am I dismissing that package repositories provide tremendous value to the user. However, the parent asserts that package repositories act as a gatekeeper, thus making it harder for users to install software that is not in the package repositories. That's not true, since linux/BSD/MacOS package repositories just enhance an open system. In that context, they're mere convenience, not a requirement.
External dependency hell. Not in the repository, not invited.
a) It is the same as in linux. Linux does not have a magic "Install this HERE" button for whatever problem arises any more than windows does.
b) The general, run of the mill, average person does not need, want or care about live cd's. Businesses (which form the main core of microsofts business) do not want, need or care about live cd's when they buy the system. So why should microsoft spend time on creating them when a super tiny percentage of users will ever use them?
c) Driver management (in my personal experience) is easier in windows than it is in linux.
d) Go back in time, before the internet, when linux package managers only showed you what was installed on the system at a given time and only offered you the option to install packages you had already downloaded/copied to the system. That is what the microsoft thingy (Cant remember the name atm) is. It might not be as fancy as the linux variant, but it is still, in fact, a type of package manager and the MSI files are still, in fact, a type of package manager. Enjoy your garage parking lot + valet.
The theme from your comments is that a inexperienced user, like your wife f.x. which you used as an example, has a easier time doing pretty much ANYTHING in windows than in linux. And through technical inexperience they can cause much more damage in a much shorter time on linux than in windows.
So just chill, relax, look at the sky. The dude was just correcting some inconcistensies in the original article. He wasnt attacking you personally. He wasnt attacking your personal view of the software world.
He was just writing a comment.
I would just like to point out that something like that is entirely possible: http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:One_Click_Install
And as an example[1]: you can go to http://software.opensuse.org/, and type the name of a program[2] in there, and it will give you a quick description along with a link that installs that program by enabling the appropriate repository. This means you get the program automatically, in one click, and you get a working upgrade path since the repository is selected. I think that's pretty close to magic, and it is all centralised as well!
[1]: To provide a direct example: http://software.opensuse.org/package/chromium
[2]: It doesn't actually need to be a name, you can also type e.g. "Browser" and look through the results until you find something suitable and/or what you were looking for.
edit: formatting...
I used it to setup most of my dev stuff in my box. VS, SQL server, Sublime, Git, and others - all installed using Chocolatey.
How's it like?
cinst git
and git is installed.
Based on Powershell.
I kind of have to take issue with this one... They handed out the pre-release version of Win 8 for a half a year. It had no upgrade-to-full option, but for anyone who wanted to try it, they put it out there.
I'll admit that they don't give you a lot of [read: any] try-before-you-buy options for Win 8 currently, but this is the first version in a while that they've done like that, so it might get better again.
It doesn't count. At all. It was a "be nice to developers and crowd-source the bug-hunting" gesture, not a "lets get everyone in the world to try Win8 for free!" one.
They call it the "Store" because package manager is scary, and doesn't allow you to part with money quite so easily. Maybe someone should make a fork?
sudo apt-get install 99centgame --CREDIT_CARD 4959 4959 4959 4959 01/14
You shouldn't need to know this. Also K-Lite is full of garbage, CCCP is what you want.
> Package manager. Yes there is - there is just no pick and place repository like Debian. You can get packages from Windows Update though. The package manager is called Windows Installer and the packages are MSI packages.
Well yeah, the maintained repository is what makes package managers so attractive.
Congratulations! Now you know exactly how Linux users have felt for the past 10 years every single time someone wrote an "I tried Linux, but . . . " article.
It should be "an ignoramus tries another shaped hammer and hits their finger a few times before they get a nail in". That applies both ways.
Lots of ways in which windows isn't quite as expensive or has better things available seem to exist but be hidden. I believe you when you say a trial exists, but it's not easy to find - not only is that not on microsoft's homepage, it's on some random other domain (digitalrivercontent.net? Really). It's the same with bizspark/dreamspark/etc. - there's a lot of ways to get microsoft stuff cheap or free if you know them, but they're not easy to find if you don't.
>Drivers. Windows update always handles these for me at least. I haven't had to bother with driver fiddling for years. Not only that, 99% of hardware I've worked with recently just works out of the box anyway.
Only last week I had to track down some realtek drivers for the microphone on my parents' laptop. Not only had they been unable to find them themselves, they'd paid a guy to install drivers on that computer and he'd missed the microphone. I'll agree that usually it's easy to get drivers once you have an internet connection - but quite a lot of wireless chipsets won't work out of the box without a driver. I haven't bothered with driver fiddling for years either, but that's because I've stopped building my own systems and been using ones that come with windows (and drivers) preinstalled; try installing retail windows on a computer and you might be surprised.
>Everyone installs K Lite Codec Pack and media player classic these days (or VLC) almost as a first item to install.
Sure, "everyone" knows about twenty different things you download and install as soon as you get a new windows machine. I see another post pointing to nlite as a solution to all this. But you only know this because you're familiar with windows. Many of the problems windows users trying linux for the first time complain of are of the same nature, and easier to solve.
>Same as you install win32-codecs on Linux.
That hasn't been necessary for years.
>Maildir import. You stick an IMAP server on your Linux box and copy all the shit to your PST.
Seriously? That's supposed to be a user-friendly solution?
It's the same as digging for coupons. Everything has a learning curve if you want to do it cheaply.
> try installing retail windows on a computer and you might be surprised.
I've been installing vanilla MSDN Windows 7 (with SP1) images on 15 different types of Dell/Lenovo machines. No issues at all. TBH some of the cheap arse vendors probably do have driver issues, but not those ones.
> Sure, "everyone" knows about twenty different things you download and install as soon as you get a new windows machine.
Again part of the learning curve. The same with Linux. the first thing I do is:
apt-get install build-essential vim-nox tmux sudo openssh-server
> That hasn't been necessary for years.
Sorry gstreamer stuff via ubuntu-restricted-extras. It's the same turd rolled in different coloured glitter.
> Seriously? That's supposed to be a user-friendly solution?
There's absolutely nothing at all friendly about Maildir to start with.
Lame excuse. That is not part of the learning curve for most users. Most users use the GUI of their distro.
>Sorry gstreamer stuff via ubuntu-restricted-extras.
Sorry. GUI. For this, most distros prompt you with a button to click on, to install the required plugins when you try to play a particular file. Not many of my Linux using friends are aware of ubuntu-restricted-extras.
I find it pretty horrible and try to avoid it.
I use Arch, myself. But Synaptic is very well-made. I prefer the command line to any other GUI.
Not linux. For most distributions the free version is right there on the homepage - often it's the biggest and most prominent link.
The coupon-digging analogy is a good one. Rather than a case of "linux is free, windows is expensive", it's often "linux is free, windows is cheap/free if you can dig out enough of the right coupons". But it's still a much better experience with linux.
>I've been installing vanilla MSDN Windows 7 (with SP1) images on 15 different types of Dell/Lenovo machines.
How many different wireless chipsets was that? And yeah, some manufacturers get it right or lucky, but many don't. My impression is your odds of it working out the box without having to hunt down a driver are better with linux - but I've had to track down a driver there on occasion too.
>Again part of the learning curve. The same with Linux.
Which is the article's point - not that linux is always easier than windows, but that many of the things you have to learn when starting out with linux were just as difficult to learn when starting out with windows, you've just forgotten them through familiarity.
>Sorry gstreamer stuff via ubuntu-restricted-extras. It's the same turd rolled in different coloured glitter.
I don't know what you're talking about; I installed mplayer in the default way and it plays everything I encounter on the internet. It would probably need some codec installation to play WMV3 or real media, but does anyone use those any more? My impression is the world has pretty much settled on MKV/h264, and linux handles that fine out of the box.
>Sorry gstreamer stuff via ubuntu-restricted-extras. It's the same turd rolled in different coloured glitter.
The important difference is that Ubuntu will offer to install that for you when you try to play something it doesn't have codecs for. I was trying to play a DVD on Windows 8 last week and it took me forever to figure out that the problem was that Microsoft was no longer shipping the decryption key for CSS by default anymore.
That is quite a different level of user though to the things people "just know about" for Windows. Most people that consider themselves Windows power users don't have a compiler installed, let alone a SSH server, customised versions of vim (or emacs, or any similar editor) and a terminal multiplexer! I can only imagine that trying to find equivalents to such things on Windows wouldn't be a pleasant or easy experience - the only one that has an obvious answer is Visual Studio, and the last time I dealt with that it took the best part of an hour + multiple reboots to install, let alone the service pack.
Compiler is installed in c:\windows\microsoft.net\framework folder. You get c# and vb.net compilers in there. This is by default.
SSH is not really the windows way of doing things. Windows 7 pro and above have an RDP server built in though and you can remotely connect powershell to other machines using WinRM.
There is a thing called powershell ISE installed which is a terminal multiplexer, scripting IDE and debugger. the version with windows 8 (and a download for windows 7) has syntax highlighting and completion built in.
So actually, the windows equivalents are already there.
And no you don't need to install visual studio (which the pro edition of 2012 takes only 20 mins to install on my 5 year old ThinkPad).
That is justifiably part of the parody.
Keep dreaming. I'm currently demucking my roommate's HP shitbox. It doesn't have VLC. For the love of god, she installed Quicktime.
Funny thing that, I have a Microsoft wireless keyboard/mouse. When I plugged it into my old Linux laptop, I was a bit worried it might not work, but it did, instantly. When I first plugged it into my newer Win7 laptop, not only did it have to install drivers, but an installation wizard popped up, for a piece of application software, didn't tell me what it was for, except that apparently it was related to the wireless keyboard/mouse and was going to "enhance my experience" (yeah, whatever). All that from just plugging a device! I had to click though this wizard before I could even use the mouse/keyboard. I didn't have to reboot, but for sure did it have some extra updates to install next time before I was allowed to shut down.
Some good points the article makes are about the drivers, which need to be installed from CD and/or downloaded from the vendor's website. I think Linux does this a lot better by including a lot of the drivers into the kernel itself. But these points are easy to be ignored when you are irritated with the article.
Drive letters are a hang back from DOS. Ironically at a very low level, NT doesn't have the concept of drive letters at all and does volume mounting as per *NIX systems. That's all down to Win32.
The fact that large swatches of win32 API are implemented as userspace abstractions is wonderful source of weird windows behavior. For example, changing current directory is not thread safe (not only in the way that you don't know which directory is really current in presence of multiple threads changing it, but SetCurrentDirectory() itself is not an atomic operation)
Why does it matter what it does internally (unless you are knee deep in WDK work)? SetVolumeMountPoint() pretty much acts like mount() as far as the userspace is concerned.
That might be because it is poor parody.
"Please note that this article is a parody of what some Windows users write about Linux. The events described here have not actually taken place. However, the article is based on author's experiences with the Windows 7 operating system."
What is being parodied - the experience of Windows users encountering the peculiarities of Linux - is not particularly interesting, nor is it particularly worthy of ridicule. Such stories tend to be about people giving Linux a legitimate chance and running up against technical unfamiliarity.
The particulars of this parody just don't carry any water. Windows downloads drivers automatically? That's dog bites man since the 1990's. Windows doesn't have a live CD? Nobody [1] expects it; again there's decades of precedence AND nobody cares.
The parody isn't funny. It doesn't go anywhere intellectually, and if there is a message it's something along the lines of Windows users are inept. The last point is salient because Windows users tend to admire people who understand Linux, not hold them in contempt.
I read the title and clicked. I read the lead and thought it could be interesting. It wasn't and I too was annoyed. Not because I love Windows, but because the article is dull.
[1] "Nobody" in a statistically significant sense relative to the population of computer users and potential computer users.
Yeah, that was what bothered me about the post. The piece that it links to, the example of what is being parodied, is some guy giving Linux a shot because he's tired of Windows breaking all the time. Responding with an attack on Windows seems like missing the point pretty badly. Windows not being very good was like the premise to begin with.
Also note that lots of the stuff in the "State of Linux" piece is about stuff that is clearly wrong/buggy. It is a little funny when Branko goes "people come from Windows to Linux expecting it to behave the way they are used to, and that was the main point." Cause then the whole thing comes off kind of like it's one guy complaining about segfaults and disappearing GUI-elements, and another responding with "you're just expecting them to behave differently because you come from Windows."
I will offer the example of scanner drivers and videocard drivers. True: many linux distros come with immediate support for both. You are more likely to be able to get your monitor's native resolution on first boot with a linux system. You are more likely to be able to use a scanner out of the box on a linux system. You run into problems, however, as soon as you care about more than basic operation. If you want to use a scanner that is not supported by x-sane on linux, you have a very short list of options, and one of the items on that list is "write your own driver." If you want to use certain multiple monitor setups, you typically have to install the buggy proprietary drivers. Certainly it is possible to get stable access to more advanced video card functions, but the process of achieving this is significantly more complex than letting windows update download and install your graphics driver.
Huh? Support for obscure hardware has always been a big selling point for linux.
>the drivers that it does have are often not as good as those on windows.
Quite the opposite IME. With windows you will always get some kind of driver, but it will usually be buggy. Linux doesn't always have drivers, but those it does have tend to be very reliable.
>If you want to use a scanner that is not supported by x-sane on linux, you have a very short list of options
Sure. But how many scanners is that? Maybe I've been lucky, but all of mine (mostly HP, who admittedly have a reputation as being especially good with linux) have "just worked".
>If you want to use certain multiple monitor setups, you typically have to install the buggy proprietary drivers.
Buggy? Maybe by linux standards, but I've found the nvidia graphics drivers far more reliable than any I've used on windows (it's a shame that ideology means installing them is poorly integrated). Admittedly the way modern windows can seamlessly restart its graphics drivers mitigates this a lot - but linux hasn't needed such a thing yet.
With Intel graphics you can do multi-monitor just fine with the open source drivers. I don't know about AMD.
I gave multi-monitor support as an example, as it has been one of the areas I've had the worst luck with in linux. I've had a version of Fedora that was completely unable to support connecting an external display to my laptop, as well as an install of Ubuntu that permanently stopped displaying anything after switching the multi-monitor mode in xrandr when the proprietary drivers were installed. I've also had many whole-linux-OS crashes as a result of fiddling with multi-monitor setups. This simply doesn't happen in Windows. I've had Windows gfx driver crashes, but the only time I've gotten a system freeze in Win 7/8 is when there were actually hardware problems (e.g. faulty gfx card, or overheating.)
Shrug, completely the opposite of my experience. I guess anecdotes can contradict each other. Though I wonder: are you using an ATI/AMD card on linux, and NVidia or Intel on windows? Thinking about it when I've had NVidia cards my windows drivers have been just as stable as my linux ones - and when I tried to use linux on a machine with an AMD card I did hit some hard lockups.
While at the same time, support for current hardware has always been a plus of Windows.
Hardware support is hard.
I decided to give Windows 8 a try, but had not used Windows prior to that since Windows 2000 was new and shiny. For someone born in, say, 1995, who is now entering college, it doesn't seem completely inconceivable for them to have never used Windows. Windows had far less dominance during that time compared to when I was a youth.
"Everyone knows" that you need to defragment your hard drive to improve its performance.
"Everyone knows" that you need to keep your anti virus up to date if you want to keep using your computer.
etc.
1) Desktop should have Metro app's but not in their current implementation. Instead they should be opened on the desktop like any other program. This would allow multi-tasking, use of app's between various devices and it would greatly simplify the dual application environment problem you have now. It would also allow the Windows key to always toggle the start menu and the desktop. Currently the Windows Key toggles last program or menu which is pretty confusing.
2) Power options... a desktop computer should have a default state of off. Not locked. In the metro menu, where you sign out there should be options to both put the computer into stand by and shut down.
Using the lock option signs you out and doesn't put the computer into stand by. Using stand by does what it says it does but mysteriously doesn't sign you out... very strange. Shutting down the computer requires too many steps. (windows 7 is windows key right arrow enter) A locked work station can be shut down by what is essentially an unauthenticated user.
For some reason the default metro mail app frequently wakes the computer from standby making it unusable. Stuff like this should be fixed.
3) Dual screen is painful. The right settings menu is on the far edge of your second screen. The start menu seems to appear on a random monitor. Both screen's have app launch icons on the desktop yet if you click an icon on the second screen it opens up where-ever the app was last opened. This means often you launch an application on screen 2 and it appears in screen 1. Its weird. In its current state you never know where you should be looking when you perform actions.
You then have minor stuff. If IE is your default browser the IE launcher will fire the metro version of IE. If you have different default browser the same icon fires IE on your desktop... its strange.
Some programs are just unfindable on the start menu... I can see no reason for it. Sometimes they just don't exist which is pretty weird.
Moving to the top right to get the settings panel often doesn't fire properly. Can sometimes start appearing when you are closing a program..
I look forward to Windows9. I feel all of the problems of Windows8 are solvable and the next version is bound to solve a bunch of these problems. If you don't have Windows 8 don't get it. Stick with 7 which is a far more together system.
-------------
In contrast I installed Ubuntu again on Saturday and everything is much smoother. The Amazon results when searching for files is weird but things are far more intuitive and together than Windows 8.
This can also be achieved via the switch on the front of the workstation, but at least doing it through software is a bit more graceful. I've needed to shut down locked workstations at work a couple of times, and being able to do it in software would have been a lot nicer.
The Start menu appears on the screen (right or left) based on which Windows button you pressed (left or right side of space bar).
You can also open the charms menu on either screen, although it is more difficult to position the mouse pointer at the bottom of the left screen.
Different strokes for different folks I suppose... but I haven't turned a computer off except in specific circumstances (like I know a power cut is coming, or I'm not going to touch it in months) for years.
Before anyone says anything about power usage, I actually attached my computer to a power meter and did the math, and leaving a computer on standby instead of switching it off costs you an extra (in NZ) NZD$3.65 a YEAR. This is because "off" computers still use a bunch of power.. if you're really worried about your computer using up power while you're not using it, pull the plug out of the wall. Otherwise, standby is awesome.
Definitely not worth it from MSFTs perspective.
How hard is it to just copy the data over a network or mount the image in a VM running its native OS?
Note that support for the .iso filesystem was recently added.
Like the old joke from the Windows 95 source code says:
if(first_time_installation)
{
make_50_megabyte_swapfile();
do_nothing_loop();
totally_screw_up_HPFS_file_system();
search_and_destroy_the_rest_of_OS_2();
hang_system();
}
Lucky him -- I was installing some new PCs just yesterday, and windows didn't even have ethernet drivers for them; digging around for the driver CD is a pain :-/ Then when I eventually did get online, I found that the company that made my scanner don't support 64-bit versions of windows at all :-|
(All works fine out of the box with latest ubuntu)
Also, what's the windows equivalent of "tar czvf /media/usb/home.tgz ~/" transport USB stick "tar xzvf /media/usb/home.tgz"? Setting up custom profiles for several users on several PCs was hours of pain, and they somehow came out differently each time x_x (As you can tell, I'm not a windows sysadmin, and don't have access to a copy of Windows Server...)
That's the author's point. He's parodying the myriad 'I tried Linux, and it sucks' blogs that have been around since forever ago.
Since he knew that large sections of the internet have trouble with subtlety and sarcasm, and wouldn't get that without him saying so explicitly in the text, he said so explicitly in the text. Which would have helped if there weren't also large sections of the internet that are prone to commenting before reading the text.
And you don't have to install anything. I chuck it all in c:\windows and it's available in PATH then.
You think copying random files from the internet into system directories with no tracking, no upgrade management, no uninstall capability is a good thing?
If it was a corporate machine, we'd package it and deploy it via GPO.
On Linux, you just specify it as a mount point at install time, and it gets populated (or it uses its existing content if you don't elect for format it). Technically, you could do it after install by copying the existing files over to the new drive, and then changing the mount options.
So, out of curiosity, how would you do that on Windows for folders like C:\Users?
What is more ironic is that they play up features of Linux like they're great (Live CD), or berate Windows for driver issues. Linux is infamous for lack of driver support.
My most recent experience: Attempting to install Ubuntu variant on my 3 year old Dell Studio laptop. I must boot onto the Live CD first to run the installer, but the Live CD freezes while loading because, I'm sure you guessed it, it doesn't have the proper drivers. Still running Windows, money well spent I guess.
What I'd been told was a real server OS disappointed me with its lack of a true admin account and access method (there are privilege states above "Administrator", there's no sudo), its paucity of shell commands, its lack of true terminal emulator support, its lack of multi-user capability, its lack of 'mount' semantics (some parallels), X11 display abilities, a badly crippled POSIX implementation, miserable documentation, remote access, etc., etc.
After a few months of playing with a number of then-available Unix compatibility environments (MKS, UWIN, Cygwin), I finally gave Linux a shot. And ... it wasn't bad. Comparable to the SunOS workstation I was using at the time in tools.
Eventually discovering Debian and what real package management could buy for you really sealed the deal. I've continued to have tangential exposure to Windows over the years, but it's always been a hugely frustrating, complicated, inconsistent mess to deal with.
1. You download virusBin in Linux, you cannot run it- it does not have execute permission by default.
2. OK so either graphically or at the terminal (chmod u+x) you make virusBin executable.... (I'm not sure why you did this...) If you run it, all of its access outside of /home/$USER is read-only, the system and other users are safe, maybe your data is not.
So if you really want to mess up your machine 1. Download virusBin 2. Give virus Bin execute permission 3. Assuming you are the systems admin, you can now run it as root... sudo ./virusBin..
To get a user to do all that it is going to take a LOT of social engineering.
The question is, how did the executable get there in the first place? Most of the explots that really hit windows are bugs in browsers / addins.
A lot are also spread via 'naughty things', to view this really degrading porn of some celebrety you must first do this survey and execute this code. Or even bundled in with pirate versions, over a few beers a buddy who works for a small design software firm was laughing at how many people had become infected by a virus which was spread by just one torrent of their product (not by him!).
Or like 419 scam emails, really obvious things, that weed out the people with an ounce of sense to leave only those dumb enough to run it. People like my Dad, who typed in the admin password because he was running as regular user :( Then threw a hissy fit when I suggest he not know the admin password in future.
Sure administrator as default is dumb, really dumb. But most of these attack vectors would still be open on linux, in fact we've seen some for the bsd based OSX last year.
"The downside is the user is prompted in a manner that allows them to override this."
Exactly right. Since both of those prompts are "click OK to continue" types it makes the barrier they present is much lower than Linux where you have to change a file permission, then type your password again (and probably from a terminal to use sudo). I would say the barrier is so low they seldom work from what I have seen.
My family members who run Linux don't even know how to use sudo... they just use the Ubuntu software center/synaptic.
"in fact we've seen some for the bsd based OSX last year" I have not used OSX in 4 years so I can't comment meaningfully on this. My gut tells me Apple probably takes a lower barrier approach like MS, but I don't know.
Most things I've seen spreading are already infected executables of pirate code. Or exploits.
Now we can talk about the fact running as Admin is stupid, and UAC is just a way to allow bad habbits to continue. But, just look how complex (and sometimes elegant) the average entry in pwn2own web browsers are. Side stepping ASLR, breaking the sandbox, privlidge escalation.
All of those things can and are possible on any operating system, this includes linux.
I think that, once smaller developers start getting their apps signed (I'm not sure how hard it is to do this) then this will be a wonderful tool, and already probably is nice for non-power users. I currently leave it disabled because enough of the stuff I use isn't signed, but in the future it might be a nice step forwards for security.
Then to type your password when the usual dialog appears.
What if there is a security bug that permits escalation? Windows defaults to limited permissions now also BTW.
Virtually all desktops are either single user.
I exploit a bug in any of your networked client software to run locally. Since it's running under X11, I can now log all of your keystrokes. If you ever run sudo and type in your password, I have root. On the other-hand I don't really care about running as root, since most of what a botnet is used for can be done with non-root permissions anyway.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE4fz8cwL9c
It's OVER
Uhm... no? There's a re-partitioning step in W7 installer.
(This is no excuse for Evolution, but honestly, who uses Evolution? I wouldn't blame all of Windows for <insert crappy Windows app>).