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[GlyphGryph]

Wow, Emacs can do a lot of stuff.

This convinces me I need to stay far far away from it.

I long ago learned that I work best with and far prefer programs that can do everything I need them to do and as little else as possible.

Emacs is obviously for the type of people who want and use smart phones
I don't fault them their tastes, but I'll never feel the same desires myself.

[qwertyuiopas]

I wouldn't be surprised if at least half of the people reading this have thought of http://xkcd.com/378/...

[malimbar04]

I wouldn't be surprised if at least half of the people reading this have thought of http://xkcd.com/378/...

I didn't, but from now on I will. That is pure win.
I am personally just using gedit and the terminal for my programming learning needs. It's clean, simple, and I like the color scheme they chose.

Wait, why do I have this nagging feeling the thread was meant to talk about something else...

[Dwarf]

• Some might consider this the weakest argument, if worded this way but: Security Through Obscurity.  If you're being hacked by someone who can get through your usual Linux defences and take advantage of your Linux machine after breakfast, they'd have already gotten through your Windows defences while still buttering their toast.  No computer system is completely hacker-proof (and the biggest problem is not your system, but the social engineering methods behind the Black Hatter's attempts to get you to open up your system to them... which even with the Win7 version of UAC is often too much of a case of shooting fish in a barrel) with a little luck and/or expertise behind the attacked.  But the phrase "low-hanging fruit" does sort of make a decently set up Linux machine far less worthwhile trying to randomly attack than all those Windows ones sitting there ready to be plucked.  If not already plucked into a handy bot-net.

Security Through Being More Secure Inherently?
Being a *NIX, Linux natively supports permission, is multi-user etc.
Support for this is merely hacked together in Windows.

Well, okay. A badly managed Linux system is of course not going to be terribly secure, but an out-of-the-box distro is usually quite well configured.

[Starver]

Security Through Being More Secure Inherently?

What I meant is that "Security Through Obscurity" in and of itself is actually a bad philosophy.  If the only way into the system is to have a conversation with an Elizabot through a conversation conducted through successive attempted login usernames, and get her to accept a proposal of marriage (frexample), then it's rather obscure, but once someone figures out the trick then it's open season.

But it's a useful shortcut to "Not being Windows, the script-kiddie hacker's favourite platform" (as a target, leastwise).  I did try to be inclusive about the better security model in my description, because I thought adding a further bullet point within the same 'scope' might be less readable.  (Looking back, it was bad enough.)

But I must say that most OOTB distros Live versions have default root passwords, so that's going to be a possible attack vector in and of itself, once one profiles the OS and works out what's there and figures out a way to get the user to accidentally run a script that "su"s with said password.  (Not that Live distros are necessarily that important to hack, and persistent enough with personal data or further information that they're going to be actually worth going for, of course.)

But, yes, Linuxes have proper user models.  Although give me physical access to the hardware of either Linux or Windows (up to Vista, certainly, not yet had reason to do it for 7) and I don't need much more than a pre-prepared CD of one kind or other to gain access, under most circumstances.  (I could do it manually, with time to hand, but there's already tools built up which are easy to use.  Which are all too easy to use, in fact.  And when we've been asked to unlock machines with 'forgotten passwords' we feel obliged to make sure that the client can provide some sort of proof of ownership, just so we're not culpable in unlocking stolen goods[1].)

But in general, the sudo system on Linux does not bother the user as often as the UAC dialogues do in Windows, so there's far less equivalent to the "Click yes, click yes, click yes" automation that gets those users in trouble, as well.  (Or, at first, worries them so much that they can't do what they're trying to do.)


[1] To the extent that we recently had a laptop in with a password problem from a probably quite respectable source, and we're still not quite sure whether the request for proof-of-ownership (which makes an inelegant acronym!) was the reason they said "Oh, never mind then" and took it away again with no-fix-no-fee applying.  I'm thinking that they were just blinded by my explanations (it had been a busy day, and I do tend to ramble when in a rush, you might have noticed), rather than it actually being 'hot', but you never know.

[Dwarf]

Well, physical access is another can of worms

[optimumtact]

Well, physical access is another can of worms

Hook your keyboard up to non lethal power source and your good .


On the topic, Sudo is pretty effective for a way of controlling user's permissions. It just seems less intrusive than UAC for some reason, I don't know why, It might be because you actually have to enter a different password (assuming it is different of course) rather than just clicking yes.

[Dwarf]

But then again, sudo is good for, hm, pretty much anything.
It's not specifically made for managing users, but to execute stuff as another user (root being the default; just think of sudo as meaning 'superuser do')