Resources for “The Ultimate Linux/Windows System”
April 25th, 2006 by Kevin Farnham in
The System Rescue CD: www.sysresccd.org
The AbiWord Word Processor: www.AbiSource.com
The Gnumeric Spreadsheet Application: www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric
The Scintilla Text Editor (SciTE): www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html
Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird: www.Mozilla.com
Kevin Farnham Can Be Reached at kfarnham@LyraTechnicalSystems.com
Kevin's Business Web Site: www.LyraTechnicalSystems.com
Kevin's Software Development Experimentation Site: www.MathematicalAnalysis.com
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I noticed from the article
On June 2nd, 2006 Benjamin (not verified) says:
I noticed from the article instructions that downloads get lost in cyberspace somewhere. I had them set to a download folder of the desktop. (This is for firefox) I then created a downloads folder under the /users/myusername/downloads. But all I get is a zero length file and no download window. Not sure what's causing that either.
Linux/Windows recommendations
On May 21st, 2006 Bill (not verified) says:
I noted a few things about the article. Before I begin, though, it is well written and definitely seems to be a topic many would be able to use. Thanks!
Going one step further would be to add "user" to the options as well. This does imply a few changes to "defaults" (user implies nodev, noexec, nosuid), and in fact "defaults" isn't needed. The resulting union of defaults with noauto and user gives "rw,user,noauto,async". In a simple dual-boot computer where the user typically has full access, this simplifies everything (
"mount /share"as the user).The now changed /etc/fstab entry would look something like this (sorry about formatting):
"/dev/hda4 /share vfat rw,uid=1000,gid=1000,noauto,user,async 0 0".There are a few times (e.g. multi-OS projects) when the user will need exec (or perhaps even suid). Those are the exception and, in my opinion, it's better (and more secure) to make the user want to include those if needed. (That's why, if I understand it correctly, "user" implies "nodev,noexec,nosuid".)
There are definitely other ways to automate this (perhaps using autofs or something similar), but for single-user systems, those solutions are rarely that helpful.
There is one subtle drawback to this. I'm a fan of keeping all user documents (and email and ...) in a centralized and easily found location such as this extra partition. By sticking with the windows location, you are not gaining that advantage. That's minor and more of a personal technique, however.
This can possibly bite somebody when they perform an upgrade to windows, using NTFS instead, and they think to themselves "Oh, I don't need to back that up, it's on the linux side as well." (Contrived, perhaps, but feasible I guess.)
Thanks for the article.
-bill
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