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Comment by sheepz | Hacker News Reader

This is why I love Linux. Every generic piece of software comes with no BS attached. For example, on Windows, if you want to mount an ISO you have to download some shady piece of software, the installer of which comes bundled with n toolbars. In Linux it's a matter of a simple one-line command...

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While that was super annoying for years, Windows 8+ natively supports ISO mounting[1].

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mis_laboratory/archive/2012/08/30/mo...

Ah, the heady days when merely having an ISO mounter on windows caused cheat-detection software to ban you.

In Windows 8, the ability to mount ISOs is native.

was not aware of this, pretty late to the game though.

Better late than never, I suppose.

Adware goes to where there are a lot of non tech savvy users. If desktop Linux gets more traction, you'll see such search hijacking on there too. Note that this story is about search hijacking on OS X, not Windows.

exactly. As soon as there are many users, people who intend to "monetize" starts creeping in, and they are always mighty powerful.

The use of a package manager/app store might help prevent that though. They won't be able to bundle crapware in their installers.

How? Every package manager that I've seen so far allows installations of locally downloaded packages. Some will even helpfully download all dependencies. That's a good thing in general, however, the package could just as well contain adware/spyware. And every package format that I know of supports post-install scripts, those could easily change configuration settings. Since package install runs as root that added layer of security doesn't help here.

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