Ben Kevan’s Blog

Microsoft Security apparently is a Bad Request

So right on the cusps of the Emergency patch release by Microsoft on Oct 17th, I decided to try to read up on it (I run Linux, so I was immune anyways). Read More about that here

But to my surprise when I went to go read up on security on Microsoft’s stuff, I thought “Hey, they must have a security subdomail”, so I went to security.microsoft.com and here is what I got:

Click for image for full size picture

How I read that is Microsoft Security is a Bad Request (or a request that cannot be fulfilled).

Just thought I’d share with you guys, it made me laugh.

Tags: Microsoft, security

Switching from Windows to Linux, what you need to know

Switching from Windows to Linux and what you need to know:

Since we are in touch economic times the most important question is “How much will this cost me”? The answer is nothing, zero, zilch or nada. Whatever phrase you want to use (unless you’re really a stickler and want to divide your monthly Internet bandwidth cost against the time it took you to download the application and (well, you get the point). Hell, I would go on the edge and say it may actually save you money. How? You’ll be in touch with your computer, you’ll be excited to learn do stuff on it again, you’ll be heading the charge with changing the way a Corporate giant in Microsoft does it’s daily business, you’ll be FREE. (Man.. too much braveheart lately).

What is linux?
In the past years the phrase Linux has been mis-represented as a full blown distribution and not it’s original meaning. Linux, actually derived from the “Linux Kernel”, which was originally written by Linus Torvald in the early 90’s. So it is important to not refer a distribution as Linux, but as a Linux Distribution.

What is a distribution (distro)?
A distribution such as openSUSE (SUSE), Ubuntu, Fedora, PCLinuxOS, and Mandriva are all contain the basic Linux Kernel, and a bundle of applications which would provide your X support (GUI, Graphic User Interface), your Desktop Environment (Gnome / KDE / XFCE etc), and all your other basic and advanced functions. The major differences between distributions is their packages of choice (.deb (Debian, .rpm (RedHat package manager)), what packages come included with the distribution, and their management interfaces. The confusion of the many distributions may be one of the factors that turn people off of Linux, as they view it as “too confusing”.

What distribution is best?
This would be impossible for me to get up and say “Here is the best distribution for everyone”. Ever distribution has their good and their bad points, and each distribution does something better then the other. I personally use openSUSE, which is supported by Novell. I originally converted from Fedora Core (around the 4 days) to SuSE because the robustness of the distribution, and the choices it has always given. With that said, other popular distributions are Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Gentoo, Linux Mint, PCLinuxOS, and for historical reasons Slackware (one of the original distributions).

Can I still run my .exe programs?
The quick answer is no, but the more in-depth answer would be yes. Out of the box, the Linux Operating System does not allow you to run .exe binaries (which are Windows Binaries). However, there is a project called Wine (which Google has been great at helping advance) which allows us to install some Windows Applications and run some of these binaries. However, support for everything is not in place, and would be a per application basis.

What is a Desktop Environment?
I touched earlier in “What is a distribution” about Desktop Environments (typically referred to as DE). A DE is a an environment which consists of what most consider their “Desktop” and is comparable to what we see when we log onto a Windows workstation / server. These DE’s consist of our icons, wallpapers, folders, windows, taskbars etc. This is our functional GUI which runs off of the X system. The chosen DE is another thing that may separate one distribution from another.

What is the best Desktop Environment?
Much like Distributions. This is a hot topic especially between the 2 major DE’s Gnome and KDE. Another major player in the DE environment is XFCE, and a up and comer is called Enlightenment. The only thing I am going to say about these to not spark any type of debate is to try them all yourself to see which fits your need best. I personally find KDE 3.5.10 to be the sweet spot for me. KDE 3.5.10 is being replaced by KDE 4.X, but for my uses (every day production use at work) I find that KDE4 has not yet filled all the features in KDE 3.5 that I use. GNOME however is very popular in the enterprise work force, as it’s very easy to navigate (although I find KDE to be a friendly swap for you Windows users reading this).

Ok, now that you know what the Linux Kernel, Linux Distributions, and Desktop Environments are we’ll get down to the part where we replace Windows with Linux.

Here are some general uses for Windows users in the home space. After this we will go into what
you’re used to in each version of Windows, and try to compare it to Linux.

General uses:
Web Browsing: Some Windows applications for this task are: Internet Explorer, and Firefox comparable Linux applications that can do these tasks are Firefox (look familiar?), Opera (many more). For most home users, we use our computer as a way to browse the World Wide Web. A computer running a Linux OS, would be the perfect replacement, if this is your main need. Why you may wonder? Because a computer running a Linux OS is less susceptible to getting Malware / Viruses / Spam / Popups. This helps save the data on your machine, the personal data you type in at a web site, and in many other ways. I could write a million reasons here, but if you use your computer for only the internet, you should highly consider trying Linux, to save you heartaches with Viruses, etc in the future.

Word processing: Some Windows applications for this task are: Works, Word and openoffice, the major comparable Linux application is openoffice (again notice a trend? What is on Windows, may already be on Linux). If you run openoffice on Windows, a switch to Linux would a simple. You’re not doing anything different and using the same applications? So why the hesitation?

Spreadsheets: Some Windows applications for this task are: Works, Excel and openoffice, the major comparable Linux application is openoffice (again notice a trend? What is on Windows, may already be on Linux). See Word processing.

Email: You are just doing mail via the web (ie Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail etc) then this does not actually refer to you, as that is considered “Web browsing”, and you should re-read the security implications I’ve mentions in Web browsing. If you use a client like outlook, you have 2 major replacements in Kmail (which ships with KDE), and Evolution (which ships with GNOME). If you are pulling from a Exchange Server, I would recommend Evolution (which could actually run on KDE (gotta love the flexability of Linux).

Multimedia: Some applications for these tasks are: iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. The applications that would replace these in Linux are actually way better then both the applications mentioned for Windows. These applications are Amarok, Mplayer and VLC. I won’t get into the gists of why they are better, just know that they are in every way. Note with Mplayer and VLC, you can run nearly any format including formats that are for “Windows (yes, some video formats are actually Windows only). Also for DVD playback you can install libdvdcss (which is kind of a touch subject due to it’s legality in the US, I recommend checking it out, and fighting for the cause).

Ok.. off the high horse now, and on to migrating from Windows to Linux and what you can expect.

The Windows Vista user:
So there you are, with your new Windows Vista box, super excited because you now have something called Aero. You’ve been awiting years (about 5) to come out with something other then Windows XP, and now you got it an annoying thing that pops up every time you want to do something (User Access Control/UAC), and a kick ass way to switch between applications. You’re living in a euphoric stage until you find out that Linux did that before Vista was out, and can do about 90 even cooler functions. This is courtesy of Compiz/Comiz-Fusion. If you’ve seen someone with a modern Linux distribution, then you’ve undoubtedly been awed by their 3-D Desktop, and the different methods of seeing what applications are open. So you wonder, how can I get that? Easily, just install a new version of a major distribution. Yes, most major distributions ship with Compiz enabled by default. That means these awesome features right out of the box. You can enable them, and disable them by running their configuration manager (won’t get into detail here, but there is plenty out there to get you started). Now that I’ve broken your heart, and kicked you while you waited 5 years for the new version of Windows, I’ll let you know what to expect when you switch from the most prevalent Windows Operating System out there, Windows XP. (Vista users should also read the XP section).

The Windows XP user:
When you hear Linux many of you off the bat thing “It’s better, it’s this, it’s that”. I do agree with you on that front, but it is not without a learning curve, or without a possible headache or 2. Do you remember all the major headaches while learning Windows for the first time? All the crashes etc? Think of those headaches minimized by 85%. If you’re then willing to take the adventure, and going in with the mind set that there will be a learning curve, that may introduce some headaches, then please read on.

When you install, you’ll notice that the installation is very straight forward, very manager based and just as easy if not easier then a Windows XP installation. Once installed, and logged in you’ll notice that you won’t have to install tons of different applications (ie Office etc) as most packages ship with the distribution. You may or may not see an increase of speed (if you have a 3 / 5 year old installation of Windows XP then heck yeah, you’ll notice a speed increase). If you are a basic user, here you’ll notice no difference, other then the lack of Administrative privileges. These are not given to users, as it introduces un-needed security risks (we’re all just used to running as “Administrators” in Windows). To run something with elevated privileges we use sudo, but again this will only need to be done with certain administrative tasks, and most needs will prompt you for your or your root (or administrator in windows) password.

That’s it.. If you’re a regular user, that is all you’ll notice (if you even notice that). As a power user, or someone that like to tinker, you’ll notice that there is no registry, you’ll also notice you have the ability to modify a lot more, and have the freedom to do anything to your machine (include break it, which you power users will probably do while you’re in your “learning phase”, with power comes problems for us curious ones).

Sorry this is all over the place, I hope someone finds it useful, feel free to leave me a comment, and i’ll add to it. Thanks a ton.

Great external links:
openSUSE
Ubuntu
Mandriva
KDE
Gnome
openoffice

Here’s a great list of comparisons between Linux and Windows also (man, if I knew this existed before hand, I would have just linked this instead of writing everything out).
Wikipedia Comparison of Windows

Tags: linux, Microsoft, opensuse, ubuntu

Installing Microsoft Fonts on openSUSE 11.0

As you may have noticed currently there is no package in the openSUSE 11.0 update repo to install Microsoft fonts during your openSUSE 11.0 installation. As we have learned that sometimes you just need fonts like Times New Roman and many others that are provided from Microsoft.

So, are you here because you wanted to find out how to install the said fonts. So here’s what we’ll do.

First lets install cabextract:
sudo zypper in cabextract

Run the following commands:
wget http://download.opensuse.org/update/10.3/scripts/fetchmsttfonts.sh
chmod a+x fetchmsttfonts.sh
sudo sh fetchmsttfonts.sh

As you will see, you are just downloading the 10.3 script that did the installation and I have tested and verified that it works on 11.0.

I guess it’s about time to compile a “What to do after you install openSUSE 11.0″ blog or Wiki, if you think that’d be helpful please leave a comment or email me

Note: If the first time it says it fails to extract, just run it a second time.

Tags: fonts, Microsoft, opensuse