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Linux Passes the Microsoft WGA Test
Wil writes "Here's a good one for the Linux fans -- running Wine on Linux and attempting to download a Windows Genuine Advantage protected file from the Microsoft website works just fine. It seems that Bill Gates has a soft spot for Tux after all, or at least isn't bothered about him downloading updates."
If you go to tools->manage addons and disable "windows genuine advantage" then you'll have no problems downloading any updates. They only fixed the javascript exploit.
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
Why would anyone do that, they still haven't bothered to fix this work around.
Before pressing 'Custom' or 'Express' buttons paste this text to the address bar and press enter:
javascript:void(window.g_sDisableWGACheck='all')
It turns off the trigger for the key check.
You *do* know that WINE Is Not an Emulator (Hence the name, WINE), right? That means (among other things) that you don't have to go copy/buy a copy of windows to make Wine run, it provides the Windows API with its own code to Windows programs with Linux, not Windows, as the OS.
That means that if the "genuine advantage" check works on WINE, then Microsoft's software can't tell the difference between "Genuine Windows" and WINE under Linux, or they just don't care (which seems unlikely). That's big news.
The only reason it still works is because Wine just went through some massive changes with regard to configuration. The WGA check works by checking for specific registry keys that Wine uses. The new configuration moved those keys from HKLM to HKCU. It's just a matter of time before they change the check they use. The position of Alexandre is that we're not going to play the insane game of working around their workarounds.
The good news is, there's not much reason any more to need the WGA. We've got a new DCOM and MSI framework that makes those two downloads largely irrelevant. Jacek Caban is hard at work integrating a Gecko engine into Wine as part the MSHTML.DLL (usually referred to as "Internet Explorer" on Windows.) So native Windows DLL's are falling by the wayside.
Of course, Microsoft got so much bad press over the WGA check that I wonder if they'd tempt it all again. Last time it raised the ire of eWeek and PC Magazine, so I imagine the next round will just be more bad press. Headline: "Giant software company continues to squash open source software"
obPlug: Wine is slated for a beta release in a little over a month.
----- obSig
That was true in the past, but Wine will show up as Win2k by default now (or very soon, there has been quite a bit of discussion about it lately). My copy of Wine (20050111, I don't really have a use for it, but I like to keep up on it) shows up as Win2k, and I didn't pick that myself. Having said that, you can choose any of the versions of Windows from 3.0 to 2k3.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Bullshit. It's EMULATING a winapi interface on a Linux kernel and accompaning libraries accessable to X.
according to http://www.answers.com/emulate&r=67
Computer Science. To imitate the function of (another system), as by modifications to hardware or software that allow the imitating system to accept the same data, execute the same programs, and achieve the same results as the imitated system.
There's nothing about "doing binary machine language translation" or things like that.
There was no copy of Windows acquired, period. Wine is a reimplementation of the Windows API for Linux and family. It doesn't run Windows it runs Windows programs.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
Or you can just bypass all that and disable the activex control...
Just enter this into your broswer URL bar ( one line ) :
o n=0; expires=01 Jan 2999 00:00:00 GMT';
javascript:document.cookie='WinGenCookie=validati
This has worked for ages.
Lima India November Uniform X-ray
I would play Half-life + Counterstrike under WINE on Linux, and eventually it got to the point where you needed to run Punkbuster to be able to play it online. Basically, the servers look for Punkbuster to scan your system for cheat tools and make sure that everything looks kosher before they let you play.
I downloaded Punkbuster and was sure that it wouldn't like the looks of WINE's environment. I connected to the server, waited for it to verify and... it worked! I was feeling two types of way when that happened.
1. WINE is god damn amazing.
2. Punkbuster is stupid. I could have any number of hacks running under Linux, I could have been running WINE under ptrace() the entire time, injecting evil as needed into the Counterstrike game world, and Punkbuster would have been completely oblivious to it. No matter how hard it tried it would never be able to inspect the host Linux system for evil. Client side anti-cheat systems are doomed.
Congratulations, you're a part of a hole in the wall operation. So, what is your point exactly? $109 for one copy of Windows 2000 installed on all your office computers illegally is more valuable, because of the free help you get from your buddies, than $3k for Red Hat Enterprise Linux with a corporate support contract? Huh? RHEL is out of your league buddy, you don't know what you're talking about, get lost.
As said in grandparent it is not a sanbox.
:)
But if you run it under a non-privileged account under linux you will have it (sort of) in a sandbox enviroment.
Guess you could put it in user-mode linux too.. if you are really paranoid
Now they (MS) will claim again that hackers (as in crackers) use Linux to pirate Windows. (why else would people use Linux to download Windows updates..)
That's because many of us check /. from work, where we have no choice of operating system used.