Windows OSS Only For Administrators?

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 5, 2005 @05:20AM from the hey-buddy-you-gotta-be-an-admin dept.

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?"

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The solution I used... by TheSHAD0W · 2005-01-05 06:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

There were a few issues with my software that needed me to consider multi-user access under Windows, especially as I was adding new features; when these features finally came to fruition, I modified my software, sticking preferences, application and temporary data either under the user's "Application Data" folder in "Documents and Settings" in Windows, or in a dotted directory under *nix. I thought this was an elegant solution.

So what happened? People yelled at me. Why was I polluting their system, putting files all over the place? Why couldn't I have kept it the way it was?

You just can't win...