Linux through a browser? COOL!

I love the StumbnleUpon extension for Firefox and today i stumbled upon a really cool concept. It’s called workspot.com and aims to provide “a Linux desktop, through a browser”. Cool. I can now look and preview a distro before downloading it, and i won’t have to read reviews and user opinions to decide on a new distro.

It would be a great service for Linux enthusiasts as well as Linux newbies to help them decide which distro to decide upon. And it seems more convenient than downloading a live cd version of the distro and and then waiting for another 4 minutes for it to boot up.

The downside:

1) The site isn’t up and running yet, it just says “coming soon”.

2) There are just 5 distros to have a preview of (that’s what the image at the site suggests, though i have my finger crossed for more).

3) The user experience may vary on the browser being used to access the site (though most recent browsers would do the work well, but i have seen morons using IE4 and Netscape as well).

Anyhow, I am waiting for the site to get started. And a cool idea: you can bluff to your friend that you have five distros installed on your system and you can switch between then in just seconds. All you need for this trick is a fast internet connection and a decent browser in full screen mode.

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What do you use: OS X, Vista or Linux?

For all users using shiny apple Macs, there is a little bit of nasty news. There was a contest organized, named PWN 2 OWN by the organizers of the CanSecWest security conference. It asked the attendees to show off their hacking skills against Vista SP1 (fujitsu laptop), Leopard 10.5.2 (Macbook Air, and Ubuntu 7.10 (VAIO). The first hacker to take down any of the three systems would get a cash prize of $20,000 along with the victimized laptop. Nobody managed to pull down any of the systems on the first day, as for the first day contestants were told to use only network based attacks. The second day, they were allowed to use web and email based attacks. And guess what, the Macbook Air was hacked down in 2 minutes flat. The attacker used a website holding malicious code and targeted Safari as its victim.

Ubuntu 7.10 was the only OS to remain unscathed. This proves a lot of things. First of all, Linux still rules in matter of security. Microsoft has been (shamefully) forced to make its OS secure. And while Apple may taunt about its OS being most secure, it is not the truth. The truth is, Mac OS X has a smaller user base. And so the hackers are not interested in attacking an OS having a smaller user base. And it is to be noted that OS X and Linux have the same roots. Now the question arises: why did Apple fiddle with an already stable base? Not only this, the attack was pulled off using Safari as its target. It’s the same Safari that Apple has been trying to install on our systems using Apple software update.

So, if you are a Mac user, beware. You are at a security risk. Avoid visiting suspicious sites. And windows users – DON’T USE SAFARI. Use Firefox or Opera instead (IE still has numerous security loopholes). Or do the best – switch to Linux. Linux users – rejoice. Time has again proved that you are using nothing but the damn best OS of this planet (I wonder what people on other planets use as their browsers, though).

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Three cheers for Wubi!

Ok, so you are a pc user who wants to try out Linux but haven’t tried out Linux yet just because you didn’t knew how to install a Linux distro (or were just afraid of your hard drive getting wiped out during the installation), it couldn’t get better for you. There is a new application which is built just for you and it is named Wubi. What it does? Well it’s a windows application (surprise!) and it lets you install Linux just as you would install a windows based application. Cool, isn’t it?

Here’s how to proceed: you download Wubi off the internet (or get hold of it from somewhere else), launch the application and tell it the location of the Linux disc image. Then it asks you a few questions: on which partition you wish to install, your username and root password etc. Then you sit back and watch Wubi do its magic. The next time you reboot, you get to see a multi-os boot loader with both windows and Linux options. It can’t get any easier.

For now, Wubi works only with Ubuntu. But I would like to see future versions of it working with other distros as well. It is a great product. Worth praise, indeed. Innovative software. I just hope that the open source world continues to see such innovative softwares.

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