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Windows OSS Only For Administrators?
Torsten writes "We all know it: it is no good idea to run Windows with Adminstrator privileges all the time. But when you use a normal user account, many programs will not work properly. I have recently recognised that even open source software has difficulties with the Windows rights model. Openoffice will continue to ask for registration until an Administrator stops it. Firefox will not install new search plugins for normal users and will not even tell why. FlightGear starts the configuration screen, but only an Administrator can fly.
Have the OpenSource developers problems adapting the windows right model? Or does nobody bother being Administrator?"
It's not just windows either. I always have problems trying to add extensions and search plugins to firefox as a non root user in Linux, and it hardly ever works properly. The problem is that applications are written in such a way that in order for the ordinary user to accomplish a simple task deep underneath there is a small operation like a file system write that must happen. As is in the case of installing an extension. What needs to happen is the application developers need to make sure that for any action which should be allowed for a non root/administrator user that there are no priveledged instructions to be executed.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
On my home machine I am the only user. For day to day things I run as a limited user. But I want to run programs like eMule (only to download legal things, of course). But eMule is constanly writing to its temp folder. So I just installed eMule under the My Documents folder as a limited user instead of Program Files as Administrator. You have to run eMule once as Administrator so it can write something to the registry but after that you run it as limited user.
They don't spam, that's for sure.
I use a unique address for every e-mail address I give out, and the one I gave openoffice has not been one of my spammed entries.
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
If you had read the documentation, you would know that in order for Openoffice to run as a normal user and save your settings, you have to run the install as "setup.exe -net" -- just like you have to do in Unix.
In my experience, this is just a program design issue. I'm using linux, and I've never had any problem with it. Allmost every program in linux doesn't need root priveliges anyway. And the ones who do (like XCdroast) provide a special interface for it. Still not satisfied? Use su or sudo to run it temporairly in as root.
However, I had this one problem with firefox search plugins. The reason why most users can't update the searchplugins is because the dir containing the searchplugins is global, and a standard installation doesn't allow uses to write in it. This is rather unacceptable behaviour in Linux. Bugs like that just prove how some developers are unaware of multiple users and priveleges.
In Windows, the situation is rather different. Most users don't need multiple accounts on one desktop. So it's not a big problem (they think), because they are in charge anyway. This way, a lot of programs running on Windows don't bother providing a multi-user interface, but just stick to a global configuration. With this attitude, it's just asking for problems
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Search plugins, which the story refers to on win32 & which I refer to in my response, are installed to the installation folder. On the box I'm currently on, that is:you have to install as root with the default permissions.
This is a known bug: look at bug #232638: (no linky because they don't allow links from slashdot)