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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!
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...
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.
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)