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Automatix 'Actively Dangerous' to Ubuntu
exeme writes "Ubuntu developer Matthew Garrett has recently analyzed famed Ubuntu illegal software installer Automatix, and found it to be actively dangerous to Ubuntu desktop systems. In a detailed report which only took Garrett a couple of hours he found many serious, show-stopper bugs and concluded that Ubuntu could not officially support Automatix in its current state. Garrett also goes on to say that simple Debian packages could provide all of the functionality of Automatix without any of the problems it exhibits."
I have used automatix on 50+ installs of ubuntu edgy and feisty... Not one problem yet.
This is old news, well Automatix being dangerous in general I mean not Mr. Gattett's report. Automatix has been referred to by many as a tool to "enhance" Ubuntu by lazy users who do not care about system security or stability since Breezy Badger.
I appreciate your zeal on the subject, but if Ubuntu distributed MP3 without paying for the license in certain countries (like USA), they would be in serious legal trouble. However, in Ubuntu 7.04, it will automatically install the proper decoder for you the first time you try to play an MP3. It works, it's painless, and it's the best we can do until we get someone in Congress (or your respective national legislature) brave enough to destroy software patents.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
It is not warez. It is codecs, closed source software and other stuff you don't get in your basic install. But with 7.04 most the things Automatix does is useless, since it is equally easy to do the same thing in add/remove.
After the launh Ubuntu 7.04 Automatix isn't worth using anymore. Codecs are easily installed with add/remove, as is most of the other software in Automatix' repositories. And the few programs that you can't find in add/remove are mostly published as .deb packages. Google has even made a .exe like installer for google earth.
The article is a technical crictism of Automatix, how it doesn't follow proper package rules, etc.
This is the conclusion to the article, which sums it up pretty well
Automatix is barely needed anymore. You can do just about anything through the standard repos these days.
kill all the fucking niggers
Erm, did you even read the analysis? Automatix craps untracked files all over the user's system. It makes to effort to interoperate with Ubuntu's package manager (dpkg) and is even prone to race conditions that could leave the system unbootable!
They have. There's Debian-Multimedia, which has been around for a few years. I know there's one or two specific to Ubuntu, five minutes Googling will probably find one. I've been using D-M for years now and have not had a problem. Automatix is an ugly hack and should be avoided at all costs.
They already have; the repositories are called 'restricted' and 'multiverse' (the former is supported by Canonical, the latter is not).
Automatix provides w32codecs, a package that's likely to be illegal in most countries that respect copyright. It's a set of DLLs and other code libraries used for decoding videos in Windows. It has about 60 codecs from unidentified sources with no particular attention to licensing that I can see. This package is often used as a workaround for Linux's generally poor support for video playback.
It's a question of whether you want to gamble that large software companies will continue to look the other way on your infringement or not.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
The summary is misleading... in particular the use of the word "illegal."
Automatix is a utility that automates the installation of a bunch of software that is considered "must have" for people just switching to Ubuntu. For instance, it installed Firefox, mplayer, wine, DVD playing software, and multimedia codecs. (Actually the installer would just give you a list of things you could install, you select the ones you want and click "next.")
I don't really understand why this is being characterized as "illegal software." The packages are already in the usual repositories. The utility would just automate the installation for you. If you live in a country where installing one of those packages is somehow illegal (is this actually the case?), then that's your responsibility. The tool is just an automator intended to ease the transition for new users. It really provides nothing above and beyond the standard packaging interface, except that it was easier (in some people's opinion) to tell new users "install automatix" rather than telling them to open the package manager and list the software they should install.
In any case, the whole argument seems rather pointless. Automatix was created a few years ago, at a time where installation of things like multimedia codecs was perhaps non-obvious. New users were flooding forums with repeated requests like "my mp3s don't play! why?" and "how can I play DVDs on this Ubuntu thing?" Automatix was created as a simple response to that.
In the meantime, Ubuntu has, from what I can tell, cleared up these issues. Installation of codecs is straightforward and pretty obvious. The package manager is very user friendly. In short, there is no need for Automatix. Basically, Automatix was an ugly hack. It's always been recognized as such, and developers have always discouraging people from using it. On the Ubuntu forums, the standard advice is no longer "install Automatix," since it is recognized to be a non-optimal solution.
So, in short... I think this issue has already passed us by.
The 'illegal' part of this thing is nothing but a footnote.
2 007May18/Logs
The important thing is that it's a stupidly dangerous (to your system) piece of software, that most members of the Ubuntu community are trying to inform everyone about. A lot of community sites swear by it, and when anyone argues they give the 'it works fine for me' argument.
This is not the mentality we want to have as a linux community. The automatix team refuses to make their software better, and launced a few all-out assaults on the communities that warn against it. Even going as far as to say (on their website, up until a few months ago) if you go ask help for automatix in their IRC channel, and claim that the people in the ubuntu channel sent you there, they (automatix team) won't help you. Which is stupid in and of itself, but that's the mentality that the automatix people have exhibited time and time again.
Because of this, and in some random attempt to clear their piece of software (and argue about it's proper terminology whether 'package manager' or 'packaging script' or whatever), and to get their lead developer (arnieboy) unbanned from the ubuntu forums (for trolling, more or less), they went to the Forum Council and petitioned, the forum council rejected some stuff, and said that they shouldn't make a decision on the technical merits (since they're not technically qualified or whatever). I imagine this is the fruit of their lack-of-verdict, someone higher up (who was qualified to assess its technical merits) finally took a semi-official look.
I wish I had links for the meeting, here it is: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/ForumCouncil/
Clones are people two.
To get Flash working on 64-bit Linux, try searching your distro's software repository for "nspluginwrapper". Technically it's a bit of a hack, but from a user's perspective it's fairly transparent at getting 32-bit browser plugins to work on 64-bit platforms.
Debian, at least, has it.
Also on Debian, to get MP3 and video codecs add http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ to your list of repositories, either in the Synaptic GUI, or in /etc/apt/sources.list. It's been a while since I first started using it, and I think you might have to reinstall or upgrade some packages that depends on the codecs, but after it's setup it works just like the official repositories.
Maybe not
> She couldn't use flash on 64bit linux
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/jantivus.list
I know you're just trying to rant, but in case anybody else is interested:
sudo su -
echo 'deb http://janvitus.interfree.it/ubuntu/ feisty-upure64 main-amd64' >
apt-get update
apt-get install nspluginwrapper
and voila, you can use the flash plugin on 64bit linux.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Medibuntu is a much safer way to install codecs and some third-party apps than Automatix.
That stuff is exactly what the "ubuntu-restricted-extras" package is for.
Rather than screw around with Automatix, perhaps someone should post the following script instructions:
I really don't see how installing some random script off a website and then messing with a new GUI program is any easier than that.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Mod parent up!
On a lot of support forums I see people having trouble with 64 bit Linux, I guess they figure they have a 64 bit chip so they have to install a 64 bit OS -- even though there are warnings all over the place about compatibility issues.
Not only that, but you can also run the 32-bit versions of your programs on a 64-bit OS install. In the case of Flash, just install the 32-bit version of Firefox, then all your 32-bit plugins will work fine. The only problem that will be encountered when running a 64-bit install is if you have a binary-only driver (kernel module) that is only available for 32-bit.
Let's keep in mind that both WMV and WMA have native, free software decoders available that don't require agreeing to Microsoft's licensing.
There is a net loss in using automatix. Upgrading is a huge pain, as so much stuff is broken / hacked together. Most things automatix was built for can now be done quickly in a none-hacky way. There is no real reason to use automatix, as the problem automatix addressed (lack of an easy way to make common customizations/installs) isn't there anymore. You sure about that? I certainly used RealVNC before the feisty final release. Insecure? That'd be addressed in security updates. Can't comment, know nothing of it. iptables is also installed by default on ubuntu. You can also use firestarter to manage it in through a GUI, that's what I do
I understand that users don't want to have to change their touchpad configuration just because they're using an ALPS pad instead of a Synaptics one. I understand that users would like their Wacom touch screens to work without having to edit xorg.conf. I understand that users don't want to have to configure their hotkeys in order to get them to do anything useful. I understand that users want their laptops to suspend and resume correctly. Those are issues that I understand and have had the time and skills to do something about.
I also understand that users want to be able to play their MP3s, their DIVXs and use their ipods. The reason I do less for these people is that I have very limited time (I have a full-time job that's nothing to do with Linux development). Does that mean I want everything to be done via the CLI? Am I ignoring the needs of users? Do I have a fundamental misunderstanding of what people actually want to use Linux for? No, I don't think so. I just contribute where I can with the resources I have. I'd prefer to be able to solve all of these problems, but I'm limited by actually having to do other stuff with my life.
(as far as the DMCA says; it could be legal to distribute it as protected free speech, but I don't know if anyone has tried to use that defence since the MPAA backed off in the DVDJon case).
1) The DVD-Jon case was in Norway
2) Consequently, it wasn't under the DMCA
3) It was the public prosecutor that tried and failed twice to convict him
4) They chose not to appeal it to the Supreme court, but only because there was no point
5) Since then, Norway and the rest of EU has been forced to adopt the EUCD aka euro-DMCA
6) Nobody has really tested the current law after the EUCD, at least not here in Norway
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
6) Nobody has really tested the current law after the EUCD, at least not here in Norway One 'problem' with the EUCD, atleast here in Norway, is Article6 tp 1 that states: 1. Member States shall provide adequate legal protection against the circumvention of any effective technological measures, which the person concerned carries out in the knowledge, or with reasonable grounds to know, that he or she is pursuing that objective.
What makes this the coolest paragraph is that as soon as a way to circumvent the protection is published it's no longer effective. Downloading a program that enables you to play something is not really "actively pursuing" to circumvent a DRM scheme.
However, even if circumventing DRM for personal use is not ruled illegal (still in Norway), normal copyright laws still applies so you can not distribute it even if the DRM is 'ineffective' of course.
Seriously, we've seen exactly this sort of awful, awful bundling written for a lot of RPM repositories as well. Filtering out the badly written ones and providing work-arounds for them is really painful. I'm not surprised at all that some amateur software bundler wrote their "great idea to put it all in one place!" software but proceeded to violate all sorts of basic software standards.
For excellent examples of just this sort of conflict and mispackaging craziness, take a good look at any of the Oracle installers of the last 8 years or so, or any of the hardware vendor's driver installation tools. Serously, most of them are not as bad as this, but lord, they're not good. This is why I worship the names of DAG and DRIES, the primary third-party RPMforge repository maintainers for the RedHat based world. They just do things right and set an amazing example for this sort of repository manager wanna-be.
The problem is that AMD changed a lot with x86-64 beyond doubling the register size. They also added a few more registers and tidied up the instruction set a fair bit. Running in 64-bit mode is typically faster, since you get a lot less register churn. On something like SPARC, it's typical to run pretty much everything in 32-bit mode, because all you get by going 64-bit is a load of extra overhead on loads and stores of pointers. On x86 you get this overhead, but it's offset by the extra registers. This makes running 64-bit software on x86 much more attractive, even if you don't need the extra address space.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Mod Parent down. You're working on very outdated information. I've been running a pure 64bit OS for ~4 years. I can't remember the last time in the last 2 years I had trouble with a flash site. (Other then they're generally complete and utter crap) nspluginwrapper works 99% of the time for running 32bit flashcrap in a 64bit browser. If someone can comprehend basic english and follow simple instructions, there is no reason to handicap a 64bit system with a 32bit OS. To mimic the fanboiz... 32bit is so Microsoft. Even commercial games run fine either under Cedega or natively. Granted my native game list is fairly short being Doom3, UT2k4, NWN, and America's Army.
Granted it used to require the building of a 32bit CHROOT, but for the last 2+ years it's been the installation of half a dozen libraries.
uname -a Linux ShadowAerie 2.6.20-gentoo-r8 #2 SMP Sun May 20 10:45:23 EDT 2007 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
uname -a Linux ShadowBook 2.6.20-gentoo-r8 #4 PREEMPT Tue Jul 31 17:07:41 UTC 2007 x86_64 AMD Turion (Tm) 64 Mobile Technology ML-44 AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
YMMV, IMNSHO, etc etc
P.S. Yes these are relatively new installs. The original Athlon64 Socket 939 3500 is in a box waiting to be put in a new case. It used 2.6.8 or 9 kernel.
I never needed automatix to install codecs, for the most part they were available in external repositories that just had to be either downloaded (when it was possible) or just included in the apt sources.list, get the key and that is it, apt-get install. I'm an average user with just the minimal knowledge to do things and set up systems, when i don't know how to do things I use google, go to forums etc.., I believe that if you are going to use a particular system be it windows, linux or mac, there is the need to learn to use it, not just turn on the computer and everything will work automatically, for the most part americans like their remote controls, but computers are not televisions, so please take the time to learn how to use what ever system you want to use, including how to install codecs, the illegality part of some of them, well, its an other issue.
Ubuntu is not the distributor of Automatix.
It does not endorse Automatix.
I know because I lurk in the ubuntu help IRC channels sometimes,
I know that Automatix causes many problems for users.
These users then turn to "official" ubuntu support, only to get redirected to the automatix channel.
The Automatix vs. plain Ubuntu battle is well documented on the web.
we need an "-1 Plain wrong" moderation option!