During troubleshooting for the tunneling article below, I ran across this article. The author outlines pretty well my primary problems with OS X. Of particular note is the discussion that runs through the comments. I have noticed that mac users tend to fall into the ‘you don’t need it, don’t worry about it’ defense. Why should I let some company decide on how best I can use my computer? I use gnome on Ubuntu which is my preferred os, gnome is famously non-customizable. The intention of course is to create a minimalistic and confusion-free interface that still allows a user to get things done. OS X is designed from a similar perspective, but for those who complain about not being able to easily customize gnome, using OS X must be like moving from a cramped cubicle to a coffin. The ‘you don’t need it’, ‘you’re just missing Linux/Windows’, and ‘you’ll get used to it’ excuses are lame cop outs the speaker has no idea they’re adopting because they’ve been indoctrinated into the mac way of doing things, the ‘best’ way. Since they’ve adopted it as their way they no longer see or care how shackled they are. Blind acceptance has never been respected, why should this be any different? Why shouldn’t I want my operating system to allow me to use it in a way that I choose? This site outlines my feelings the best I think, specifically:

All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don’t need to know, don’t want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.

That being said, I do appreciate how tightly integrated everything is on OS X. Doing things the mac way is a pretty worry-free experience and a pleasant change from the slavering, lumbering beast that is Windows. The terminal and Darwin provide everything I could need from a Linux perspective. In the end though, the deal-breaker for me is the menubar. If I could move it even that would be enough. That is not the case though, so at some point I will be returning to Ubuntu.

No operating system will ever be perfect I suppose. However is it too much to wish for an ‘Advanced’ user mode that gives you more access to the workings of the system?

Edit: After further reading of the comments, a lot of interesting points stuck out. Here is an example of another annoying mac zealot quoting the tired ‘you don’t need it dumbass’ line:

FWIW, heres a stab at each, pointless, point

<i>Separating Menu Bar from Window Is Stupid.</i>

Says you

<i>Apps Don’t Really Close When You Close Them.</i>

Its a window your closing

<i>Maximizing Is Broken.</i>

Its not maximising, your understanding is broken.

<i>Alt-Tab to a Minimized App, and It Stays Minimized.</i>

What are you going on about?

<i>Too Many Option Keys.</i>

Not enough brain cells

<i>No Dedicated Page Up, Page Down, Home, or End Keys.</i>

See <i>Too Many Option Keys.</i>

<i>Only One Desktop.</i>

Seriously, who the hell needs this? If you want it, get linux.

<i>The Clock Sucks.</i>

you suck

<i>iPhoto Sucks.</i>

See <i>The Clock Sucks.</i>

Safari Sucks.

See <i>The Clock Sucks</i> and <i>iPhoto Sucks.</i>

So basically, what your saying is that you bought a bike, and its great, only youd just like to have 4 wheels and a roof.

I cant believe youve used a Mac for as long as you claim, or even any computer for that matter

This is a good counterpoint to the party line ‘it’s not maximize, it’s zoom and you don’t need it windows loser’:

Some people are saying “you don’t understand, that isn’t a maximize button, that’s a zoom button, which acts differently in different applications.” Yes it acts differently, which is pretty useless. If you thinks the random unpredictable behavior of a zoom button is worth keeping, fine, then we need to add a maximize button.

Some people are saying “most windows don’t need to be maximized” Don’t try to tell me what’s good for me. I WANT the window maximized! Give me a button that does it.

This is the best argument I’ve heard so far in favor of the ridiculous menubar:

On Windows and Linux, you have to (fairly slowly) move your mouse to a specific place height-wise. On a Mac, you shove your mouse forward and bam, you’re at the menu bar.

Lots of good points made, mostly against OS X. Its unfortunate but most mac users tend to be zealots, angrily defending their chosen system by a method of screaming instead of discussion. A depressing trend that seems to be taking over almost every issue our society and culture deals with.

Final Edit: I love building my own machines. I can’t do this with a mac. So, the only way I’d ever own OS X is if I bought a Macbook or Macbook Pro. Because of the menubar and the fact that there is more than one manufacturer selling Ubuntu preloaded on laptops now this doesn’t seem likely to happen. However I would buy a 2gs if I could.

Synergy is an excellent program but does not provide encryption. This means that any passwords you send to your client machine are easily visible. However, Synergy works great with SSH tunneling and since I recently had to set this up myself hopefully I can help you do it too.

I am assuming that Vista is your server and OS X is your client; your Vista account must be administrator level. You may be able to use this info for pretty much any configuration. Sources for this article include my friend influx’s post about Powershell and SSH in Vista (used to point out a step I foolishly missed on the next source), pigtail’s OpenSSH/Cygwin Configuration Tutorial, and the Synergy Network Security Guide.

1. Install and configure Synergy on both machines. Instructions can be found here.
2. Configure Synergy for autostart. Instructions can be found here.
   1. Make sure you are starting Synergy when the system starts on both machines. For OS X use the first tutorial that describes a method for implementing options 1 and 2 as outlined on that page.
3. Install and configure Cygwin/OpenSSH on the Vista machine. Use pigtail’s page.
   1. Note that steps 3 and 4 are in the same configuration window (lower portion). In Vista right-click ‘Computer’ then click ‘Properties’ and then ‘Advanced system settings’ and click through the annoying administrator warning (you’re already administrator, -sigh-).
   2. When using Cygwin you have to run it as administrator. Select and right-click the Cygwin shortcut (in c:\cygwin by default), click ‘Advanced…’ in the ‘Shortcut’ tab and check the ‘Run as administrator’ box (if there is no shortcut make one to point to cygwin.bat).
   3. When running ssh-host-config you most likely will not want to separate user privileges, this is easiest option. When it asks about making an sshd-server user answer ‘yes’, this is very important for this service to work as expected. The script should walk you through the specifics.
   4. I had some trouble with ‘net start sshd’. I did several things to try and fix this and I’m not sure what I did that worked (restarting does not work). Try running ssh-host-config again and allow it to rewrite the /etc/sshd_config file. Also try deleting the /etc/sshd_config file and then regenerating it with ssh-host-config (don’t forget to go back and change the port). If you figure out what works let me know so I can update this information.
   5. Edit /etc/sshd_config file and change the port if so desired for further security. Then uncomment ‘RSAAuthentication yes’, ‘PubkeyAuthentication yes’, and ‘AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys’. This may be partial overkill since some of these are ok by default but better safe than sorry.
   6. Restart sshd (net stop sshd, net start sshd).
   7. Make sure you have a .ssh/ directory in your Cygwin user directory (if you’ve added anyone to your known_hosts you will have this).
4. Setup SSH tunneling on OS X.
   1. In a terminal type ssh-keygen. This will generate an RSA key (if it doesn’t use ssh-keygen -t rsa instead).
   2. Type
      

      scp -P #port .ssh/id_rsa.pub username@hostname:~/.ssh/authorized_keys

      or do whatever is appropriate if you have more than one key. Change #port to the correct port number or drop the -P parameter altogether if you’re just using the default port.

   3. Edit /Library/StartupItems/Synergy/Synergy. Change the host-name you entered earlier to localhost. Then add the following line just below the first bracket in ‘StartService ()’:
      

      sudo -u username ssh -f -N -L 24800:synergy-server:24800 synergy-server -p #port

      Change synergy-server and port (unless using default port, then drop the -p entry) to suit your configuration. If you’re using a custom Synergy port then change the 24800’s. Note that this works but is something of a hack. If you have a more elegant solution for getting the tunneling going at startup let me know. Also note that you may need to add a username if your login is different.

   4. Edit /Library/StartupItems/Synergy/StartupParameters.plist and change OrderPreference to “Last”.

EDIT: I’ve noticed that the Synergy client doesn’t always log on to the server on startup. My solution thus far has been to continue to restart until it does (an inelegant solution at best) so I think there’s something messed up with the order OS X starts and how the script fits in with that. When I figure out a solution I’ll update this article.

EDIT: Fixed duplicated link. Updated with hopeful fix for startup issues.  Also, when troubleshooting restarting the sshd server on the host machine can help, especially in cases of client reboot.

So yeah, due to an unfortunate miscommunication (I wasn’t fired), I was unable to continue my employment with Dr. J. So my work on the CVE has ended. I’m now working for ICT here on campus and it is going pretty well, however it is sad that I’m not getting the research experience I would have gained from working on VIEW. Se la vi.

Ubuntu 7.04 is quite nice. You may have to make sure your repositories are refreshed on a clean install (and double-check them anyway if you’re upgrading) but other than that installation and setup is smooth as silk. Additionally, you no longer have the headache of searching for codecs and other things needed to play videos and other media. Once you first try to play said videos, 7.04 will at your behest search and install for you. You only have to clickthrough. Nvidia drivers are equally easy via the ‘Restricted Drivers’ manager, not to mention wireless drivers. I have one machine with an upgrade install from 6.10 and another machine with a clean 7.04 install. There are a couple of minor differences in how the menus are setup but otherwise both are working out fabulously.

Married life is very nice, but not very easy at times!

Installed Vista on my laptop. I’m currently doing my work in VMWare Ubuntu, pretty stable compared to the Vista build (5728) I’m on. Some notes on Vista:

1. Sound and graphics worked perfectly out of box.
2. Doesn’t handle my bluetooth. I tried installing the existing drivers, I keep getting an error. Installing the drivers works on their own installer, as long as they haven’t been installed before and as long as you don’t restart the machine. Restarting causes them to lose the device for some reason.
3. Can’t install Eclipse properly, keep getting a long filename error. Friends say they didn’t get that, so still in process.
4. Games run faster in Vista. I was running ut2k4 in 1280×720 (aspect ratio preserved) with all settings up, now I can run it at native res (1680×1050) with no problem. There’s about 8 processes running at one time.
5. Aero uses a lot of memory (sometimes about 50mb). For power-saving and video games I use a user account running Vista Basic (roughly 1200kb). Lately, I’ve been doing everything in that account.
6. Windows Key+X opens the mobility menu, you can switch between high performance (games) and power-saver (unplugged, usually in class).
7. Vista has a disturbing amount of DRM protection builtin. More on this later.
8. Even in Vista Basic, battery life isn’t as good, but still useable for class.

At first I was very impressed, but after using it for a while it looks like I’ll be going back to dual-boot, and using Vista just for games. It has a lot of neat file-handling things that use system resources, like automagically finding my music. It’s file exploring is kinda neat, with pictures of the folder contents displayed in the folder and a my documents folder (and public documents folder) that’s actually useful. However, I need coding tools, and before I know more about how it handles DRM and other such concerns looks like the only thing I’ll be using it for is games.

Edit: I forgot one important detail. Anytime you want to do something, say, install a program, Vista will ask for confirmation as much as 3 times even when running as an administrator. It will freeze your whole computer and ask you for confirmation for the program, confirmation of the administrator, and another confirmation that I don’t even remember because I zone out clicking YES INSTALL MY FREAKING PROGRAM ALREADY.

New laptop, rawks. Intel Core Duo, Geforce Go 7300, 100 GB hdd, etc etc etc. Setting up SuSE 10.1 wasn’t too hard, and with an NVIDIA graphics card getting 3d acceleration was relatively painless. After years of setting up ATI cards in linux, I was a little concerned that it was too easy. Wireless wasn’t too bad, although in order to get it working I had to use the traditional ifup method option. Not using the slick-looking network manager means having to load YaST every time I want to change the network. Additionally, polling for networks doesn’t seem to work. However, xgl works like a dream. Makes me wish that xp wasn’t so lame. I still don’t have sound working, apparently there’s some wierd driver issue, however for my purposes that’s relatively minor at the moment. I haven’t spent much time on it anyway. Widescreen lcd on this thing is a dream. The whole experience encourages me to use my desktop less and less.

Dr. J decided to keep me on the project. I’ll be continuing the collaborative whiteboard, at the moment it’s basically a drawing widget. Having a laptop with 3d acceleration means I’ll be able to test the cve more easily, making it easier to work. And play games. Anywhere.