Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

When Slackware first came out it was so bare-bones that if you wanted to use anything that was at all useful you had no option but to download and compile it yourself. Now Slackware comes with everything but the kitchen sink. After every upgrade it takes me days to remove all the junk I'll never use. Not that I have to, I've got two 300GB drives on my main Slackware box, I'm just a Ludite like that...

I... uhh.. remember when Ubuntu didn't use Unity and it still had Gnome 2!

I tried ubuntu warty, breezy, etc. It always seemed promising but I used to be hardcore gentoo user so never took it seriously. (You should have seen my make.conf!! Custom cflags etc for my cpu which was an early p4 with RDRAM ) I never saw the advantage over "real debian" unless you wanted commercial support. I stopped using ubuntu around 07/08 or so and did a hackintosh on my thinkpad x40 (when leopard first came out) which led to a real mac purchase couple months later.

Eventually I needed a simple linux for an embedded project couple years ago and was turned on to slackware, never looked back. I soon tried it with graphics on a PC and wish I had found it 15 years earlier.

I don't use Ubuntu either, I just remember when it was like that. I usually go with Debian, except my main laptop which is Qubes.

Dodoid wrote: I... uhh.. remember when Ubuntu didn't use Unity and it still had Gnome 2!

I remember when Ubuntu, had that stupid broken sound system that could only play one sound at a time.

Raion-Fox wrote:

Dodoid wrote: Certainly sounds problematic, but do you believe it is enough of an issue that Qubes use of systemd makes it less secure (even with virtualization and all the security stuff) than something like Devuan? Of course, no code is perfect, but I would think Qubes still has the advantage, even with systemd?

I wouldn't say anything that uses such an insecure architecture like systemd would be more fundamentally secure because of it. I think you're comparing apples and oranges. Gentoo-Hardened vs, say Qubes I'd say that Gentoo-hardened is a great deal more secure. But don't take it from me, we do have a Gentoo developer who lurks. Paging Kumba.

I don't think this board has a paging notifier like on some IRC clients. Luckily, I just randomly click links of interest and stumbled upon this.

I can't speak for Qubes or Devuan and what not. As far as systemd goes, I personally don't use it, and from a strictly technical point of view, I don't think the base idea, in principle, of replacing SysV Init, is itself bad. That said, I personally don't care for it or use it, and I take umbrage at its fan base which has a penchant to declare anything not using systemd to be "broken" in unspecified ways. Kinda like that homeopathic malarkey (butt candles!) that claims to purge multiple unnamed toxins from your body and such.

From the perspective of a Gentoo dev, we aim to let people choose how to best run their system. A standard stage3 install tarball starts you off on OpenRC, but you can switch out to systemd rather easily (I think we have a guide on our wiki; though I believe we have systemd stage3 tarballs now), so you're free to run your system however the hell you want. That, I am totally cool with and is why I remain a dev to this day. How much longer we can continue to do so is an open question. My perspective is the systemd community's main goal is to make themselves the only option on Linux, and right now, side-projects like eudev are tolerated. I've heard rumblings that eventually, udev will become wholly inseparable from systemd (something tied to eliminating "libudev"), and at that point, it's unknown how the game will change. We'll just have to see.

I know paging doesn't work here Kumba. I was just hoping you'd encounter it eventually :p.

I was hoping you may be able to offer insight into Gentoo-hardened vs something like Qubes or comment on the Linux policy of burying broken shit under less-broke shit (ALSA being unable to handle multiple sound outputs due to blocking i/o and thus being assimilated by PolishAudio, hiding potential security issues in userspace behind namespaces and the like)

Raion-Fox wrote: I know paging doesn't work here Kumba. I was just hoping you'd encounter it eventually :p.

I was hoping you may be able to offer insight into Gentoo-hardened vs something like Qubes or comment on the Linux policy of burying broken shit under less-broke shit (ALSA being unable to handle multiple sound outputs due to blocking i/o and thus being assimilated by PolishAudio, hiding potential security issues in userspace behind namespaces and the like)

Gentoo Hardened is a bit of an umbrella project. It's known more for some of the hardened options enabled in the compiler (via a different gcc "specs" file we load). These options include things like stack-smashing (-fstack-protector), position-independent executables (-fPIE), position-independent code (-fPIC), something called "RELRO" (binutils/linker thing, too lazy to look it up right now), fortify-source (gcc), and such. Some of these compiler switches have become standard now (-fPIc is the big one, I think, but it was done for reasons beyond hardening -- but don't quote me on that). Glibc, as of its most recent release (2.25), fully supports -fstack-protector's strongest mode ('all').

There's also a kernel package called "hardened-sources" that includes the latest grsecurity patches for ASLR and PaX support, along with all of grsec's goodies. It tends to lag behind mainline kernel, however, because of a decision made by grsec upstream which sees patches for the latest release delayed by some number of days.

You can go a step further and also enable SELinux support under a Gentoo Hardened build if you really want to lock things down. That's beyond my experience, however, but we were one of the first distributions back in the day to support SELinux hardening.

All that said, I wouldn't try to characterize Gentoo's way of hardening as things like "hiding potential security issues in userspace behind namespaces and the like". Mostly, we're just flipping on additional compiler and linker flags that either are more strict in standards enforcement, or add checks to catch buffer overflows and stack smashing, plus a security-enhanced kernel package and SELinux policy support. Real security comes down to the end user. Running a Gentoo Hardened setup ain't gonna do squat if you allow root on TCP/23 with no password.

I wasn't referring to Gentoo specifically when I said burying potential issues. I was more referring to the consensus of morons at Redhat. Sorry for being unclear haha.

guardian452 wrote:

praetor242 wrote: Cuz Windows 10 sux.

Really? Because after using the mac since around 10.4 I got a windows machine last year and really like it.

Different strokes, I guess...

Well just because one doesn't like mac OS doesn't mean that makes Windows 10 any better. I use Windows for all of my main production software and equipment and have no desire to touch OS X / mac OS-- but that doesn't mean I'm jaded.

I'll tell you why Windows 10 is a HUGE problem and only getting worse:
#1 pushed advertisements and applications that cannot (truly) be disabled, and can only be deferred with insane acrobatics and editing of the OS
#2 constant 'chatter' to the internet and hijacking of your bandwidth with NO WAY to turn it off unless you block it from your firewall
#3 With the advent of the creator's update even more restrictions with the 'advertisement IDs' affixed to each PC and no way to turn off telemetry or CEIP as they're integrated into critical processes
#4 Locked-down interface options so you're stuck with a mismatched contrasted colour scheme (while I can make it workable, it's still stupid). Obviously the the new Microsoft generation forgotten what Brad Wardell told MS to do in XP with at least making the clown interface customizable .
#5 Bipolar interfaces that flip between "Metro" and Windows classic
#6 Forced automatic updates which often reset a lot of things and push out candy crush repeatedly
#7 No disclosure of ALL of the information Microsoft inhales through their "vortex" server and many others
#8 False interfaces that don't actually turn off what they claim (turning off CEIP under Windows 8, let alone Windows 10 DOES NOT turn it off!)

Windows 7 isn't totally excluded from the interface stupidity, apparently Windows 7 Aero is programmed as the only interface option to include V-Sync. If you disable the transparency or use classic you don't get V-Sync. Sure, not a huge problem--that is until you get tearing on a more complex display like a T221. And if you try to FORCE V-sync from your GPU's driver, Windows 7 ignores it.

Don't get me started on the fact Windows 7 (and Windows 10!) still don't have proper interface support for scaling interfaces. This is something that freaking OS/2 Warp had back in 1999 ! I'm not sure if Windows will ever have proper interface scaling due to the antiquated APIs that are needed to maintain compatibility. DESPITE THE FACT they created the Metro interface which COULD HAVE addressed that.

---
My problem with Windows 10 sentiment is that everyone who is in favour of it, deliberately ignores or WANTS to be oblivious to all of these problems (and more). Quoting Ed Bott articles (which are poorly written and the fact Ed Bott barely understands computing in general) or saying "this is where operating systems are going" is not a valid excuse.

Power users don't have time for that CRAP.

I'll tell you how Windows 10 could be fixed while retaining all of the "cloud" stuff:
Optional updates, optional CEIP, optional telemetry, optional "windows store / candy crush", optional advertisements (maybe with an extra premium "fee"), ALWAYS retain custom configured settings after updates, fully customizable interface like Windows 7 (but with V-Sync support on EVERYTHING), etc.

The problem is... Microsoft WANTS to force advertisements and gain customer data for purposes of profit. There is NO defense for that.

P.S. Oh yeah... and they could go back and borrow IBM's 1999 OS/2 codebase to fix their interface for high DPI scaling. But they won't.

ibmfiles wrote: #1 pushed advertisements and applications that cannot (truly) be disabled, and can only be deferred with insane acrobatics and editing of the OS
#2 constant 'chatter' to the internet and hijacking of your bandwidth with NO WAY to turn it off unless you block it from your firewall
#3 With the advent of the creator's update even more restrictions with the 'advertisement IDs' affixed to each PC and no way to turn off telemetry or CEIP as they're integrated into critical processes
...
#6 Forced automatic updates which often reset a lot of things and push out candy crush repeatedly
#7 No disclosure of ALL of the information Microsoft inhales through their "vortex" server and many others
#8 False interfaces that don't actually turn off what they claim (turning off CEIP under Windows 8, let alone Windows 10 DOES NOT turn it off!)

of course windows 10 is a joke for professional use. and i'm not even talking about things that involve sensitive data.

8.1 Embedded Industry Pro with a handful of patches and hacks is relatively alright especially since FreeBSD is being retarded on my laptop for now.

foetz wrote: of course windows 10 is a joke for professional use. and i'm not even talking about things that involve sensitive data.

Professional or not, the world either runs on Windows or mac OS with a majority on Windows--choose your poison; and that's not about to change any time soon since people still use VGA and serial ports as a requirement; VGA predates me .

In the future I'll probably be installing Server 2016 as my "desktop" OS to bypass the crap that plagues Windows 10 and then either Linux or OS/2 on my satellite computers. I'm hoping to leverage more into OS/2 since it hits the nail on the head for a lot of things I like and runs high resolutions reasonably well.

Raion-Fox wrote: 8.1 Embedded Industry Pro with a handful of patches and hacks is relatively alright especially since FreeBSD is being retarded on my laptop for now.

8.1 loses ITS MIND on my server, I have no idea why (7 and 10 operate just fine). In particularly the driver service needs to manually be ran from CMD in order to install any drivers--and sometimes even when it's running it's not, so if I plug my iPhone in for instance it's not recognized but will resume operation like 60 minutes later. I just don't get it.

ibmfiles wrote:

foetz wrote: of course windows 10 is a joke for professional use. and i'm not even talking about things that involve sensitive data.

Professional or not, the world either runs on Windows or mac OS with a majority on Windows--choose your poison; and that's not about to change any time soon since people still use VGA and serial ports as a requirement; VGA predates me .

I use serial ports all the time but I don't think I've seen a VGA tube monitor in 7 or 8 years now. In all fairness I had some 13w3 monitors until 2014 when I got rid of the last of my SGI machines.

Don't know what display ports have to do with operating system... are the (non win/mac) systems only supporting DP and HDMI nowadays? Ditto for serial port.

guardian452 wrote: Don't know what display ports have to do with operating system... are the (non win/mac) systems only supporting DP and HDMI nowadays? Ditto for serial port.

Because VGA has been in use since 1986 in businesses and continue to be highly common to this day. Which means it's hard to kill off stuff once it gets so integrated in an ecosystem, which brings us back to ultimately Windows will be hard to kill off in a business environment. In fact, Microsoft gets a lot of their cut now from businesses and no longer the consumer sector. They go after businesses out of compliance for MS Office very frequently. And it does pay off heartily...

Sure, I don't use VGA on any of my new systems (my monitor actually uses LFH60)--but virtually all HP, Dell and Lenovo stuff still has it. Heck, a client bought a brand new corei7 Dell with the "big three": PS/2 ports, serial and parallel! It has been awhile since I've seen parallel on a modern desktop. Yuck.

ibmfiles wrote: the world either runs on Windows or mac OS with a majority on Windows--choose your poison

oh i did choose quite some time ago and i'm pretty happy with osx since then.

Sure my thinkpad w520 still has the socket but I haven't seen a (monitor/tv/projector) with vga in several years. Most monitors DP, TVs HDMI, projectors either HDMI or some wireless thing (at our offices we have chromecast in conference rooms but apple tv seems fairly common as well). Hell even my vintage cinema 20" at home is DVI. And it's 15 years old.

We are mostly apple-centric at work with google services. Being an engineer I can mostly pick what I want (hence, razer and lenovo) But we also seem to have a very small IT team. Also since my company is tiny part of parent firm we are mostly ignored except for vpn (only necessary to access accounting files on network).

foetz wrote:

ibmfiles wrote: the world either runs on Windows or mac OS with a majority on Windows--choose your poison

oh i did choose quite some time ago and i'm pretty happy with osx since then.

I was happy living the apple life till my workload became heavily solidworks-centric. Because I spend whole days inside one app (solidworks, matlab/simulink, Codesys, recently Wachendorff projector, etc) I have learned that I really don't care what the underlying OS does so long as it stays out of my way.

And I know razer is at a premium over apple but having a decent keyboard, screen, and trackpad (not to mention REAL power!) are more than worth it. I'm hoping this or next year I can swing an upgrade to a blade pro from my w520. Our blade stealths (me+wife) are REALLY good

Apple is cheap and boring which is why IT likes it and I definitely appreciate the appeal, but at least the thinkpad has that classic style

ibmfiles wrote: #4 Locked-down interface options so you're stuck with a mismatched contrasted colour scheme (while I can make it workable, it's still stupid). Obviously the the new Microsoft generation forgotten what Brad Wardell told MS to do in XP with at least making the clown interface customizable .

You can thank the generation of these minimalist-obsessed user-interface idiots for this. It's the latest fad in MacOS, KDE Plasma 5, etc. Bevels and color are out, simple lines and soulless black/white is in. If we're all lucky, Motif will be the next fad.

ibmfiles wrote: #7 No disclosure of ALL of the information Microsoft inhales through their "vortex" server and many others

Actually, MS came clean on that, kinda:
https://technet.microsoft.com/itpro/win ... and-fields

guardian452 wrote: I was happy living the apple life till my workload became heavily solidworks-centric. Because I spend whole days inside one app (solidworks, matlab/simulink, Codesys, recently Wachendorff projector, etc) I have learned that I really don't care what the underlying OS does so long as it stays out of my way.

Yup. The same here with OrCad and Tina.
I don't care if the underlying OS is Windows.