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Tales of Conversion - Using Ubuntu at Work
madgreek writes "Here is a short story about my switch to Ubuntu from XP at work. I have been Microsoft-free for 3 months now at a Microsoft heavy shop. Few people know I am using Open Office and Linux. I create countless documents that people open using Word, Excel, PPT and nobody can tell that they were created using Open Office. From the article: 'When I first started my experiment I was trying to keep it a secret out of fear of attacks from angry Microsoft worshipers (especially from the admins and desktop support). What I am finding out is that most of the folks that I was hiding from are sick and tired of supporting Windows and are proponents of Linux. Several of them are using Linux at home. One of the guys I talked to has Vista and XP installed on his laptop. He swaps out the hard drive when switching between OS's.'"
"Sure you can alter windows with a disassembler, but is it legal to do so? And is it legal to distribute the changes?"
First of all, I don't NEED to alter windows because it is extendable easily, period (as it does the job quite well for myself @ least, as is) via disassembling its native files.
FIRST OF ALL - Most of the time (if needed)?
1.) You can layer drivers (filtering ones) for example, to even alter how Windows works from a "low level" perspective even, for various purposes.
2.) Barring that, in usermode operations, things like Windows Messaging systems (passing them across hWnds from another program, OR the OS itself) allow you to change a TON of characteristics &/or behaviours of things in Windows as well.
3.) You can use what I mentioned: SHELL EXTENSIONS!
That takes care of that question from you & YES, you can do that on LINUX (any *NIX imo) too!
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Secondly - you missed my point about shell extensions (I said "shell extensions", NOT replacements):
"As for third party addons, shell replacements may exist but they always seemed very clunky compared to changing your window manager on unix" - by Bert64 (520050) on Sunday August 05, @07:23PM (#20125677)
There ARE shell replacements for Explorer.exe (this is relatively EASY to do in fact, via one area of the registry in fact)... but, I LIKE Explorer.exe (for the most part) & when I want to add more to it?
There are SHELL EXTENSIONS & these are the little tools you can extend its GUI with, and you would be surprised how many there are (right click file context menus, & FAR more).
See this site, for an example of HOW MANY & how varied, shell extensions (sometimes called Explorer addons) there are:
http://shellcity.net/
"Can you access a CD thats formatted with anything other than ISO9660/UDF?" - by Bert64 (520050) on Sunday August 05, @07:23PM (#20125677)
Good question : Doesn't NERO (a Win32 burner program) allow this? I know it writes a TON of formats, but on reading them?? I am NOT admittedly 110% sure!
HOWEVER, I imagine IF it can write them?? IT CAN READ THEM AS WELL... right? So, given that, I imagine I can via a software called NERO (& others like it).
("Disclaimer": I don't play much with burners other than for making data backups, & the normal formats you mention, work just fine for myself!)
"As for changing the filesystems, can you actually boot the OS from a new filesystem?" - by Bert64 (520050) on Sunday August 05, @07:23PM (#20125677)
Another GOOD question: Here is my answer - why bother? NTFS does the job excellently, on many fronts!
However, this I am NOT sure of admittedly (& you may be correct on this point in fact, I can concede things here & there, because I do NOT know "everything")
Could you though? Whew, @ least not without hacking the boot loaders for NT-based Win32 OS (normal ones) & probably a TON more of the OS itself most likely!
(AGAIN though - Not worth it/why bother?)
I have, again, a watch that runs on x86 & basically DOMINATES it, because it has the best driver support there is, bar-none (& also runs on 90% of the world's computers anyhow).
Still, why would I want to bootup an OS that runs on one of the finest, most secure filesystems there is in NTFS (or FAT/FAT32 which it can bootup from, but NTFS IS their superior on many counts) from ANOTHER filesystem for, when NTFS does it great, as is?
I know of only 1 "hole" in NTFS & it probably extends to other filesystems too (because they maintain DB's of the file data) & that is zero byte sized file creation: You create TONS of zerobyte files, say, in a virus/trojan/malware (etc.) in a looping process... they take up no space technically right? WRONG - you CAN "bloat" the NTFS MFT$ eventually doing this, & lose all your diskspace eventually (I would wager this would do