DivineOmega

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Ubuntu Technical Board – Position on Mono

Jul 1

Posted by DivineOmega in Ubuntu

I recently received the an e-mail from Scott James Remnant on behalf of the Ubuntu Technical Board, regarding their Position on Mono. Here is an extract.

“…the Ubuntu Technical Board sees no reason to exclude Mono or applications based upon it from the archive, or from the default installation set.

Since the Mono stack is already a dependency of the default installation set for many remixes of Ubuntu, including the Desktop Edition, there is no reason to consider a dependency on Mono as an issue when suggesting applications for the default set.”

Since  the Mono stack is already default in the most common remix of Ubuntu (the Desktop Edition, based on download statistics), it makes sense that the official position should reflect this. One of the main curiousities is that the release of this statement brings up, is why it was released. Fingers point towards to obviously new Mono based C# application being released as default packages in Ubuntu. Perhaps one of these applications will be Banshee as a replacement for Rhythmbox, which is a replacement continually discussed on Ubuntu Forums with  each new release.

One of the main concerns of using and including more C# programs in the default Ubuntuinstallation is the software patents Microsoft hold. If Microsoft were to force all free implementatons of C# to discontinue, we would suddenly loose the ability to (legally) use such applications. Although we would be able to use, manipulate, and distribute the code for these applications, interpretation of a free C# implementation (and more specifically, the use of the implementation) could be that which is deemed illegal. This would have the effect of taking a bite out of the software library until these programs are rewritten in any other language which does not require the use of Mono.

Relying on Mono and C# is very risky due to the Microsoft held software patents. The substantial risks have been discussed siginificantly by others also stating why you should not use C# due in part to the Mono reliance. Although there is a convinience associated with C# programming, I’d personally rather not take the risk for any project I’d want to make public and usable by others in case it was suddenly unable to be used in my prefered operating system.

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Ubuntu Home Directories World Readable by Default

Jun 9

Posted by DivineOmega in Ubuntu

I recently discovered Ubuntu has home directory permissions default to world readable. In other words, any unprivileged user, including guests users, are able to access and read the home directory data for any other user. For those who store sensitive information on a multi-user computer, this can be a significant security problem or at least a privacy issue. This default resembles the configuration of a Windows XP or Vista system when the option to make files private is not selected during user creation.

If you feel the default  set-up of world readable home directories is not to your liking you can deny other users access to your home directory with one command, as follows:

sudo chmod -R 750 /home/*

This command, when entered, will give other users no access permissions. When browsing via Nautilus or a command prompt, other users attempting to access your home directory will receive an ‘access denied’ error message. This will stop read access, write access and even file listing of your home directory from other users. It should be warned that this restricted configuration could potentially cause issues with programs that attempt to access configuration files in your user directory in an unusual manner (such as when being ran in the name of another user on the system). However, from personal experience I have not encountered any related problems.

If you wish to make this configuration the default for all newly created users, you must reconfigure the ‘adduser’ software package. This can be done very simply by running the following command and selecting ‘No’ when asked whether or not your want world/system readable home directories.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure adduser

It is my opinion that home directories should be set with these permissions and the adduser package should be configured in this manner by default. Researching this as an issue, I have discovered many others also feel this way. For example, see Ubuntu Brainstorm idea #6106 and note the debate in the comments between default configuration versus user choice. Although user choice is always important, surely a more secure/privacy-protecting default which can be changed if required, is the more desirable option?

What do you think? Also, has anyone ever encountered any problems with a non-world readable home directory configuration?

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Modifications to the Notification System of Ubuntu 9.04

May 9

Posted by DivineOmega in Ubuntu

Ubuntu 9.04, known during development as Jaunty Jackalope, features a major new notifications system known as ‘notify-osd’. The new notifications are graphically very nice and appealing, however some features are not necessarily desirable to everyone. I came across certain issues with the new notifications system and have made some modifications which I would like to share.

The first issue I came across is that notifications with high textual content often displayed for too short a period of time for them to be fully read and comprehended. The original notify-osd design specification stated that the notifications system would adapt the on-screen time of each notification because upon the number of lines of textual content present. After reviewing the code for notify-osd, it seem this code is not yet implemented on the version of notify-osd which ships with Ubuntu 9.04. Henceforth this is the first modification I made to the package, increasing the display time from 5 seconds to 10 seconds.

The second change was to alter the code such that notifications would display regardless of whether a video was actively playing. With the default set-up, notifications will not be displayed if a video is playing or the notification system deems you to be busy. The disadvantage this presents in its original state, is that even if the notification area (top right) is not obstructed by video playback, such as the situation where a video is being played windowed, rather than full-screen, the notifications will still not be displayed. This behaviour was modified so notifications display regardless of video playback.

Summary of changes to notify-osd:

  • On-screen notification time doubled from 5 seconds to 10 seconds
  • ‘Do not disturb’ notifications functionality removed so notifications will display regardless of video playback status.

Download links:

I hope this is of benefit to people who are having difficulties with the defaults of notify-osd. At some point, I believe it would be beneficial to remove the existing  hard-coding of the delays and other such options, and I may personally take on this task at some point.  Please feel free to offer any feedback or ideas in the comments section.

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Ubuntu Versioning – Names or Numbers?

May 9

Posted by DivineOmega in Ubuntu

It can easily be noticed that a lot of seasoned Ubuntu users, especially in social locations such as the official Ubuntu forums and the Identi.ca Ubuntu group commonly use the development names of Ubuntu releases. Such development names being Jaunty Jackalope, Edgy Eft, Dapper Drake, Karmic Koala, etc. While this is suitable for those users who keep up with the Ubuntu development cycle or actively research such information, this may not necessarily be the best form of referencing the operating system for those who simply make use of Ubuntu as-is and do not specifically need to know these development names. The suitability and user-friendliness of referring to releases by their development name, especially after their official release date, can easily be brought into question.

The operating system itself makes minimal references to the code name, and mainly tries to refer to the release by the year and month version number. This certainly provides a more professional appearance to the product than the animal-based development names do, however, as so many tutorials and instructions found online refer to the development name, the animal name itself becomes more useful as a keyword for research than the official version number itself. This brings forth a dilemma of whether users should refer to Ubuntu releases by their development code names or their official version numbers. Whilst the official version number appears more professional, the development name is often referenced in articles such as ‘How to Install software-package on Jaunty Jackalope’. For example, the Miro download page primarily references the development name with the version number bracketed. Yet other software packages refer only to the version number (excluding the necessary inclusion of development name in the apt software repository line), such as the Dropbox file synchronisation program.

This naming ‘inconsistency’, if it can be called that, also exists in Mac OS X. The Mac OS X operating system consists of a name such as Leopard and also the version number. Apple, however, utilise the development name of their operating system as a marketing tool. An example being on Apple’s website, where Apple actively promote their computers as coming with ‘Leopard, the latest release of Mac OS X’. This seems unusual, to utilise the development name as a way to market a product, but does appear to work. Microsoft however always refer to their operating system by a definitive release name or number, ‘Windows 95′, ‘Windows XP’, ‘Windows Vista’ etc. Microsoft do not have an inconsistency in the release naming convention of their operating system and there is rarely confusion over which version of Microsoft Windows is installed on a system, as all Windows versions have a definitive, single name.

The reasoning behind this article is to provoke discussion and thoughts regarding how Ubuntu, and the Ubuntu community, should handle the issues of referring to any specific version of the operating system. Is ‘Jaunty Jackalope’ just as suitable as the more official sounding ‘9.04′? Should one format be utilised more than the other? Should the community, as a whole, refer only to development releases by their development name, and official releases by their release version number? And finally, could the multiple namings currently used confuse or irritate new users and thus be a possible barrier to adoption?

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