If you are interested in anonymized safe browsing, check out the Fearless Browser. It is a totally secure browsing environment that runs inside a stripped down Gentoo virtual machine. It includes Firefox 2.0, Tor for anonymous browsing, OpenDNS for phishing protection and fast DNS lookups, encrypted IM with GAIM, and MPlayer with video plugin for all your "favorite" sites. It has become my browser of choice. I carry it on a USB stick and can use it anywhere.
<shameless-plug>
You should try out our moka5 LivePC Engine. We implemented 3D graphics virtualization support on top of VMware so almost all Direct3D games run at (moreorless) full speed. We often play Half Life 2 network games in the office inside of a virtual machine. (We call it "regression testing":-).) </shameless-plug>
Not to mention the American Lung Association. "Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 22,700-69,600 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year." (Source)
Seriously, arguing about the negative effects of secondhand smoke is like arguing about evolution. The fact there is even an argument is solely due to misinformation spread by huge enterprises that have a lot to lose.
Deep Freeze is a piece of crap. A simple Google search brings up Deep Unfreezer, which removes the protection from even the newest version of Deep Freeze.
Their idea of protection is to use a VXD and to encrypt their executable with ASPack. Even most rootkits do a better job at protection.
The latest version of Deep Freezer supposedly blocked Deep Unfreezer. The workaround is to RENAME THE EXECUTABLE. Yes, they blocked it by looking at the name of the executable. It's scary that such retards are developing security software and selling millions of copies.
Check out the bare metal version of our moka5 LivePC Engine. It is pretty much exactly what you are referring to: A tiny, stripped-down version of Linux made for running VMware virtual machines. It includes some neat features like being able to publish and share your virtual machine with others, "subscribe" to a virtual machine and automatically get updates, and demand-page and cache virtual machines so you can run them without having to download the whole thing.
There are already lots of preconfigured Linux environments that you can download and try out with a single click. My favorite is the LiveCD feature, where you can try out a LiveCD without having to burn it or even download the file - the system demand-pages only the blocks that it needs. Pretty slick.
Running your desktops on virtual machines gives you a lot more than just centralized control. As everyone knows, all problems in computer science can be solved with an extra level of indirection. Once your machine is virtualized, desktop management becomes a whole lot easier.
Mobility. Your "machine" is just a bucket of bits. Once your "machine" is virtualized, you are no longer tied down to a single piece of hardware. You can sit anywhere and have your complete environment. Having a hardware issue? No problem, just walk up to another machine and start using it where you left off.
Isolation. Once everything is wrapped up in a virtualized sandbox, many security problems become a lot easier. You can easily isolate and monitor what the guest is doing, and it's darn near impossible for even malicious software to cause serious damage. User screwed up the configuration or got infected by spyware? Just roll back to an earlier VM snapshot. Better yet, have them boot into a pristine image every time. Thus, the solution to just about everything is just a power-cycle.
Easy management. Running on a virtual machine gives you a standard platform, so you can keep a single golden image instead of the N different images for each piece of hardware. Just keep that image up to date, and periodically push new versions out to users. User having trouble? You can get an exact replica of their whole environment for debugging, without the user having to do anything.
You can get some of these benefits with thin clients and/or Citrix, but those have their own share of problems. Thin clients have lots of problems, the most obvious of which is if the network goes down, you are hosed. Working on a laptop and/or with an intermittent connection is not possible. Besides, nowaways it's pointless. Decent hardware is so cheap, it no longer makes since to strip down hardware at the client side. In fact, many times desktop PCs turn out to be *cheaper* than thin clients. (God, I love economies of scale...)
Disclaimer: I work at moka5, a startup company out of Stanford that does desktop PC virtualization. We have a beta product called "LivePC Engine" that adds a demand-paging layer to VMware, so you can run your PC environment from anywhere (without having to download the whole thing), share it with other machines, and subscribe to other people's shared LivePCs and automatically get updates as they are posted.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are interested in anonymized safe browsing, check out the Fearless Browser. It is a totally secure browsing environment that runs inside a stripped down Gentoo virtual machine. It includes Firefox 2.0, Tor for anonymous browsing, OpenDNS for phishing protection and fast DNS lookups, encrypted IM with GAIM, and MPlayer with video plugin for all your "favorite" sites. It has become my browser of choice. I carry it on a USB stick and can use it anywhere.
<shameless-plug> :-).)
You should try out our moka5 LivePC Engine. We implemented 3D graphics virtualization support on top of VMware so almost all Direct3D games run at (moreorless) full speed. We often play Half Life 2 network games in the office inside of a virtual machine. (We call it "regression testing"
</shameless-plug>
Well, I don't suppose you would trust the U.S. Surgeon General that secondhand smoke causes asthma in children.
And I suppose the International Journal of Epidemiology is in on the Vast Conspiracy about secondhand smoke: Non-smoker lung cancer deaths attributable to exposure to spouse's environmental tobacco smoke
Not to mention the American Lung Association. "Secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 22,700-69,600 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year." (Source)
Or any of the other 74 citations on Wikipedia.
Seriously, arguing about the negative effects of secondhand smoke is like arguing about evolution. The fact there is even an argument is solely due to misinformation spread by huge enterprises that have a lot to lose.
Deep Freeze is a piece of crap. A simple Google search brings up Deep Unfreezer, which removes the protection from even the newest version of Deep Freeze.
Their idea of protection is to use a VXD and to encrypt their executable with ASPack. Even most rootkits do a better job at protection.
The latest version of Deep Freezer supposedly blocked Deep Unfreezer. The workaround is to RENAME THE EXECUTABLE. Yes, they blocked it by looking at the name of the executable. It's scary that such retards are developing security software and selling millions of copies.
Check out the bare metal version of our moka5 LivePC Engine. It is pretty much exactly what you are referring to: A tiny, stripped-down version of Linux made for running VMware virtual machines. It includes some neat features like being able to publish and share your virtual machine with others, "subscribe" to a virtual machine and automatically get updates, and demand-page and cache virtual machines so you can run them without having to download the whole thing.
There are already lots of preconfigured Linux environments that you can download and try out with a single click. My favorite is the LiveCD feature, where you can try out a LiveCD without having to burn it or even download the file - the system demand-pages only the blocks that it needs. Pretty slick.
- Mobility. Your "machine" is just a bucket of bits. Once your "machine" is virtualized, you are no longer tied down to a single piece of hardware. You can sit anywhere and have your complete environment. Having a hardware issue? No problem, just walk up to another machine and start using it where you left off.
- Isolation. Once everything is wrapped up in a virtualized sandbox, many security problems become a lot easier. You can easily isolate and monitor what the guest is doing, and it's darn near impossible for even malicious software to cause serious damage. User screwed up the configuration or got infected by spyware? Just roll back to an earlier VM snapshot. Better yet, have them boot into a pristine image every time. Thus, the solution to just about everything is just a power-cycle.
- Easy management. Running on a virtual machine gives you a standard platform, so you can keep a single golden image instead of the N different images for each piece of hardware. Just keep that image up to date, and periodically push new versions out to users. User having trouble? You can get an exact replica of their whole environment for debugging, without the user having to do anything.
You can get some of these benefits with thin clients and/or Citrix, but those have their own share of problems. Thin clients have lots of problems, the most obvious of which is if the network goes down, you are hosed. Working on a laptop and/or with an intermittent connection is not possible. Besides, nowaways it's pointless. Decent hardware is so cheap, it no longer makes since to strip down hardware at the client side. In fact, many times desktop PCs turn out to be *cheaper* than thin clients. (God, I love economies of scale...)Disclaimer: I work at moka5, a startup company out of Stanford that does desktop PC virtualization. We have a beta product called "LivePC Engine" that adds a demand-paging layer to VMware, so you can run your PC environment from anywhere (without having to download the whole thing), share it with other machines, and subscribe to other people's shared LivePCs and automatically get updates as they are posted.
Plug-n-Pwned.