Andrew is not very smart. Windows isn’t very good, but he is very clueless. There are legitimate things to complain about, but Andrew just complains.
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Windows permissions can be tricky… I’ll give them that. A lot of the tools Microsoft provides are not very straightforward.
However, PowerShell and tools from Sysinternals suite, or open source tools as well, make it a lot easier.
Managing permissions on Linux, especially if doing the ACL thing, can be complicated too. I’ve really never ran into many permission issues myself. psexec has been helpful too when needing to access things as the SYSTEM user and not get those stupid prompts asking me to change permissions for protected folders.
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Omg, it’s an inside-joke at our company now.
Anytime something happens on a server that’s been running great for years, like a hard drive going bad or the time one literally caught on fire…
98% of the time it is selinux that is the reason it is doing weird things after the main fix because selinux changed a setting on the reboot.
“Have you checked selinux?” is the go to question whenever anything breaks now, even if it’s not a computer.
We tend to forget about it these days, but the Unix permissions model was criticized for decades for being overly simplistic. One user having absolute authority, with limited ways to delegate specific authority to other users, is not a good model for multi-user operating systems. At least not in environments with more than a few users.
A well-configured sudo or SELinux can overcome this, which is one reason we don’t bring it up much anymore. We also changed the whole model, where most people have individual PCs, and developers are often in their own little VM environment on a larger server.
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I think Andrew might be a lawyer.
My roommate for a couple years in college was pre-law, and did some internships after graduation but before gaining his own law degree. He mentioned at one point how absolutely and hilariously pervasive it was at the firm he was working for attorneys to just run screaming to IT every single time literally anything was even the slightest bit inconvenient or obtuse (to their understanding). Part of it was the logic of “I bill clients at $800/hr, I am not spending my time to resolve whatever this hiccup is”, but part of it was absolutely also some bullshit power dynamics.
Yeah like, complain about the one thing MS is finally improving in recent years, clamping down on non-admin users and non-admin permissions.
Andrew is ignorant. He could learn the basics of computer literacy, which would answer all his questions, but I’ll take a shot in the dark and say that Andrew doesn’t want to do that and is perfectly happy being ignorant. And also angry.
He doesn’t exactly come across as happy…
True, his message doesn’t exactly radiate happiness, but I can assure you he felt SO much better after writing this. Tech support also doubles as everyone’s personal therapist, you see.
Never listen to anyone who is perfectly satisfied with being angry at everything.
Words to live by.
“I shouldn’t have to use permissions or sudo, just all root all the time”
“Real Men Run As Root”
I don’t run as root because I’ve always been told I shouldn’t. I don’t know enough about anything to be contradicting stuff like this. It has always seemed weird to me that we don’t run as root and then just sudo everything, though.
What is the reason we don’t run as root?
What is the reason we don’t run as root?
We are human and make mistakes. Not running as root means the computer will ask us to confirm when we are about to do something major (like a software update, or formatting a partition). This reduces the chance of making big mistakes. (But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.)
(But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.)
You don’t run VLC as root because you don’t especially trust that build of VLC
We don’t run random stuff as root because it’s a stupid risk. We try to only take necessary risks. Risks that make things easier. Running random programs as root gains you nothing and causes annoyance in that you need to fix permissions on its configuration files if you want to run out as a user
There is nothing stopping you though if you want to set up a Linux machine where you log in as root, run a desktop environment as root, run apps as root. You’re unlikely to be taking an unreasonable risk as a home user.
But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.
For the reasons you described, I won’t run VLC as root, and I don’t think 99% of users would need to. But if someone wanted to do it, the software shouldn’t stop them from doing it (beyond giving a warning and asking them to confirm).
Because you might accidentally do something which breaks the system, or you might run a program which does something malicious without your knowledge.
By gating dangerous (or protected for any other reason) commands behind sudo, you create a barrier which is difficult to accidentally cross
A big part of it comes from the security model and Linux historically being a multi-user environment.
rootowns the root directly/which is where all of the system files live. A normal user just has access to their own home directory/home/usernameand read-only access to things the normal user needs like the/binwhere programs are stored (hence/bin/bashin lots of bash scripts, it tells the script what program to run the script from)Because of this model, a normal user can only mess up their own files, while root can mess up everyone’s files and of course make the system non-bootablem. But also you can have user Bob signed in and doing stuff but unable to access user Alice’s files, and user Alice can be doing stuff and even running the same programs that user Bob is running (since it’s read only there’s no conflict) and then the administrator can log in as
rootto install something because they got a ticket to install suchandsuch for soandso.Back to your point with
sudo,sudois Super User Do, so you are running a single command asroot. By running it as root you can potentially be messing up with Alice and Bob might be doing, and most importantly whatever you are running withsudocan potentially affect any file on the computer. So if you run the classicrm -rf /it will delete every file that the user has write access to, so if bob runs it it’ll delete all of/home/bob/but Alice will be unaffected, and the admin can still log in asrootto do stuff. But if you run it asrootyou’ll quickly find the server unable to boot and both Alice and Bob will be very upset that they can’t access the server or their filesIf you host a website you’ll generally take advantage of this by giving the
wwwfolder read-only access so that web users can only see webpages and can’t start reading random system files, or for server software you can create a dedicated user to run that server software as, so if someone were to somehow exploit a vulnerability and gain access to that server user they can only mess up the software and no system filesYou’re not supposed to “sudo everything” though. It’s mostly for changing the system configuration (editing config files in /etc/, running your system package manager etc.). It shouldn’t be a “oh, I got a permission error, better sudo the same command again olol”
Real superuser allow every programs and services run as root
In defense of Andrew, until windows 10 never had I ever installed a program that made it’s own files untouchable unless you did some real fuckery with permissions.
As soon as they introduced that little warning screen in program files it was clear shit was going downhill for power users.
I discovered basic versions of windows are even more restrictive when I was unable to install my favorite lightweight pdf reader in a friend’s laptop because Windows home just said that for my safety I wasn’t allowed. With no option to bypass this limitation being hinted at.
Ended up installing it anyways but had to run the installer from an admin terminal (luckily it was windows 7 so it was a local account with admin rights instead of a bullshit Microsoft one)
drop the pdf reader. libreoffice makes the pdfs look horrific and apache doesnt work
This has to be some sort of policy being enabled. I have seen that window, but there are ways to bypass it - though in hindsight, they are not as evident. For example, right-click then choose “Open.”
that made it’s own files untouchable
that made its* own files untouchable
I make that same mistake enough that at this point I figure I’m just contributing to the paradigm shift of modern english grammar.
Making the oxford comma mandatory is my next big target.
His problem is he went to answers.microsoft.com That place is a cesspool of fuck you, but here’s a copy paste of something from 2006 so I can get some karma
He could alternatively go to…
Stackoverflow or Superuser, where the answer will be “use the search bar you imbecile, locked.”
Quora, where every question is blatant rage bait like “my 14 year old son got a B in his test. I took away his PS5 and chained him in the basement as punishment but his grades aren’t improving. How can I make him better at math?”
Yahoo Answers which is dead, and was basically Quora before Quora was a thing.
Or Reddit, where you can’t even post on 95% of subs without hitting a minimum karma threshold and where some basement dwelling mod will likely ban you for breaking hidden rule #263, then modmail mute you for 28 days without reply if you try to appeal.
I think any Q&A site is absolute dog water now.
They could come to lemmy!
…where people will definitely give helpful answers and not just dunk on them for not using Linux before diving into an extended argument about distros, sudo and run0
You’re completely right, but there’s a good reason why this happens. Why are people so insistent on trying to find fixes and workarounds for a broken system?
It’s absolutely the same mindset as boomers complaining about technology these days because they don’t want to learn how to download a mobile app. These people grew up with Windows and are too stubborn or insecure to learn something new, even if it’s consistently better in multiple different ways. Yes, there are a few exceptions to that argument, but for the most part the arguments against switching to Linux are flimsy excuses, or outdated, or both.
It’s absolutely the same mindset as boomers complaining about technology these days because they don’t want to learn how to download a mobile app.
I’m really not too sure about that.
Used to work in customer service for a major right wing (Daily Mail) newspaper, and that included tech support for their rewards club website, their newspaper reading Android/iOS/Kindle Fire app, and their bookshop website.
Pensioners struggle with technology and I really don’t think it’s just stubbornness and ignorance. I genuinely think that your ability to learn and remember things diminishes greatly as you grow older.
It was one of the worst jobs I worked in, not just because trying to explain how to do basic things like open a web browser, type in a URL or force stop and clear the cache on an Android app to a 90+ year old is like pulling teeth, but because we were paid like crap, treated like children by management, treated like shit by a lot of customers, and because we used to get a lot of editorial calls from people thinking we could put them through to a journalist so they could spout their often bigoted views. So glad I work in accountancy now. The worst customer support jobs are the ones where callers frequently go full Karen on you.
Good grief, that might be the worst customer service job I’ve ever heard of. I’ve worked Sainsbury’s ‘head office’ - which was just the outsourced customer service centre for people who phone store chains to complain about cucumbers - and that was bad enough, but at least I got some good stories out of it (“My watermelon has exploded and I’m afraid of the second one. Can a man come round and take it away?” First ever call).
You were getting Mail readers who are already a self-selecting group of thick cunts and you were getting the worst of them. Jesus Christ, that must have been rough. So, so happy for you that you’re out of that, I can’t imagine what that would do to someone’s mental health!
For the record, this was for a customer service outsourcer I used to work for. I wasn’t directly employed by Associated Newspapers and I’d say a good deal of the internal managerial and pay issues I had were down to my employer, not the client. Only thing I miss about that place were my colleagues. I had made some life-long friends in that place and there were a lot of great people who came and went.
As for management, one or two team leaders aside, they were a clique of nepotistic assholes.
I was fired from that job nearly three years into my employment (long after we lost the AN contract and I moved to a different campaign) for ‘capability’ reasons, after they dragged me through a month-long PIP and disciplinary process for failing to hit targets. Our whole email team was failing to hit performance targets and I was effectively scapegoated and bullied out of the company by a team leader who didn’t like me. In retrospect it was the best thing to ever happen to me, because had I not been sacked, I’d probably still be there on min wage and not working in commercial finance today.
My condolences on having had to work for the Mail!
My mum really wants to use her smartphone but we’ve been struggling to teach her.
Do you have any tips?
Can’t say much about iPhones because the last time I used iOS was about a decade ago, but I’m not a fan of Apple for how often they ask you to sign in to your Apple ID just to do anything on the App Store.
As for Android, learning how to open an app’s settings menu to force stop it and clear its cache is a godsend. It solves about 99% of technical issues I may face.
Retraining people to use new tools on a corporate scale is an immense endeavour, probably a huge cost given the dip in productivity, and that’s assuming there is an equivalent Linux tool in the first place.
For some people, learning new stuff isn’t as easy, and they just don’t have the investment to do so when all they want is to go about their day. The expectation that people shouldn’t be so reluctant to learn something new ignores the inflexibility that long-established habits bring in some demographics.
Conversely, while that demographic is locked into using Windows by virtue of the cost-benefit function to learning something new just too… not be using Windows anymore? is just unfavourable, others will have to cater to them.
Technology is advancing way faster these days, and it’s unfair to demand that everyone keep up with it. Hence, while recommending Linux is a good thing, being an elitist about it (as the people my previous commend alluded to tend to be) is unproductive.
Corporate adoption is Linux is absolutely a completely different discussion. Users of corporate devices are not the owners of their device, they have no expectation of control or freedom, and the tasks completed on these devices are typically simple and restricted. So yes, very little of my initial comment applies to that.
As for your other arguments, I would agree that the general everyday public with very little knowledge of Linux or the differences from Windows should have little expectation of switching over unless they decide to investigate for themselves. The main target my complaints are those people who come in to threads like these who do have the technical understanding to complain about Windows and understand that Linux is different, but constantly whine that they could never switch because this reason or that reason and oh won’t those Linux nerds please just accept that Windows is better even though we’re talking in the eighteenth thread full of people who hate it.
I think we’ll see more office drones happy with Libre Office (perhaps even on Linux) to avoid the monthly fee for MS 365, not in the office, because few care about what the boss provides (except for the crap screens) but at home
This is absolutely the attitude he was just talking about, you can’t agree, then add a “but”
Linux is not the fix for all that ails you, and it’s especially not the fix for non tech-savvy people, which as a reminder, is most people. Lemmy is not a good baseline for this because we’re all savvy enough to get onto the fediverse in the first place, which in itself is very confusing if you’re non tech savvy or coming from a place like reddit, where things are so fundamentally different.( Which i know for a fact most of you have experienced at some point)
Linux is especially good for normal boring people. It’s only bad for tech-adventurist idiots. It does email, web, documents just like windows. There’s no learning curve (though it isn’t great for users unwilling to log in, as their keyring won’t be unlocked by auto (or biometric) log-in, so they need to add their login password before they can get email or have their browser log into Reddit for them
Bet, go ahead and grab your parents or the nearest old fart you know who isn’t tech savvy and try to get them to install linux, libre Office, and thunderbird and attempt to use it.
$100 says they won’t make it through using rufus without help
I wouldn’t do that. I installed the software for them and set up their email and showed them how to do things. Linux was harder to set up back when I did that. Printers were a headache especially
But once set up a Linux box is no harder to use than a windows or apple one
Yeah, that guy’s issue isnt a matter of “Microsoft has control over my PC!!!”; more like “I’ve been using a computer for years and never actually looked at how things work under the surface”.
Simple permissions error, happens in Linux all the time as well.
Right?
This reeks of inexperience.
We lock things down because a malicious program can easily be “owned” by the user through stupid choices. And now you got viruses.
This is a way to stupid proof things. And the workaround isnt difficult, but it’s to stop people like Andrew. And so far, success.
Why are you assuming so much about Andrew?
What are these workarounds? And why are they workarounds and not standard procedures?
The workaround is to log in as an administrator and give his user account the permission to modify the files. Why is it not standard procedure? Because giving normal users the permission to edit everything by default instead of just files that they own is how people used to be able to delete system32 and brick their windows install.
I understand all that. After all, Andrew is asking for the power to become an admin.
But given your reply, it seems like Andrew is asking for that power from the get-go which, of course, is a no go.
Man, I kind of feel for the poster.
A while back I was tinkering with some website and installed some npm packages.
Then I tried to delete the nodes modules folder… NOTHING worked… Safe mode, permissions change, command line deletion,… I spend like an hour googling and raging, it’s my fucking computer I put the fucking file there, let me delete it!!!
I was ready to give up and finally stumbled on the answer on stack overflow. The npm folder that was created (I forget exactly what it was) had the ~ symbol in path name and that basically made the folder invincible.
Luckily the poster also posted the command line to nuke the fucker and I was finally able to delete it.
So yea, I kinda get it. Seeing that stupid you don’t have permission to delete this file pop-up is rage inducing.
Always know your escape characters! Usually \ works
(I wonder how many clients show that as double backslash)
sudo apt install linux
problem fucking solved
“sudo is not recognized an an internal or external command”
I literally saw that kind of message very recently on a nixos based machine and I literally had to stand up and do a lap. What in God’s green earth do you mean there’s no ‘sudo’??
Linux: Keeps the same quirks in shells alive for half a century BeCaUsE bAcKwArDs CoMpAtIbIlItY.
Also Linux:
i mean there are other superuser commands, BSD doesn’t use sudo for example, it uses “doas”
apt remove sudosudo is not installed on several distributions by default, so hardly surprising it’s not there or that you can remove it.
It’s not surprising you can remove it, but it seems contrary to teaching good habits to not install it by default as a basic utility. You don’t want to train people to log in as root
Actually I think the only way I can log in as root is sudo -i
Pretty sure root has /bin/false as its shell and it’s configured as no login my machines
If you follow the Arch installation guide it’ll get you to a working system, but you’ll need to install sudo yourself. It’s not strictly required so it’s not installed with the essential packages (or even the packages recommended for most users in the guide).
Surely any user planning on using arch would want sudo. I mean if Ubuntu desktop didn’t come with sudo I’d understand but arch? Linux From Scratch was a thing when I was still playing with Linux (rather than just using it) and that also was very much an if you want it, install it, but that suggested sudo as the likely alternative was the user would log in as root
run0 for you my guy
Nixos scares me
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Eh? On Linux you also aren’t supposed to log in as root, and you also have to individually set file permissions.
This issue is unrelated to windows, it’s a safety feature that all modern desktop OSes have
Yes, but on Linux, if I am root, I am God. I do whatever the fuck I want with my machine, for good, evil or stupidity. That’s the poster’s point. It seems like Windows doesn’t allow you to do this, or at least not easily. So I guess people who want to have absolute control over their computer shouldn’t be using Windows, I guess.
I think windows is a pretty good middle ground. Yes it’s annoying that you might need to install a 3rd party tool to give you a right click menu option to take ownership of any file/folder, but at least you can do that and it’s easy. And for normies that don’t have Linux-fu they’ll get into a lot less trouble than if you give them Linux.
MacOS on the other hand, if there’s something Apple decided users are too dumb to be allowed to do (which it turns out, is a lot of stuff), then you just can’t do it, period.
It’s quite common to login as admin on windows though (in home setups), you’ll still have to authenticate for administrative tasks (the UAC popups).
The issue here is mostly that the user has probably upgraded and windows changed their account, resulting in the files being owned by their old account.
In linux, that’s fixable with ‘sudo chmod -R’
In Windows, there’s no built-in way, you need the take ownership script.
i mean, chown is just a binary. takeown is probably pretty similar, right?
Pretty much, yeah
I assume the equivalent would just be ‘takeown /r <folder>’
As far as I can tell it always uses the currently logged in user as target though
I am the installer and only user of my pc, but Windows neeeds other users. Note: Phil is USERS not ADMIN! Not even Authenticated Users.
The long reply on how to change file ownership when it could just be
chown -R andrew /picturesdeleted by creator
In which case you could also go right-click -> properties -> security -> advanced -> click change where it lists the owner.
It’s not as quick but hey, mouse-driven UI exists.
I think I had this guy’s exact issue and maybe even stumbled upon his comment in that Microsoft support forum thread. It looks very familiar, but I could have just seen the meme before.
My problem was that I needed to do this for 100+ files, so using the UI individually for each file was out of the question. The eventual solution I found was in this tutorial for adding a context menu entry that changes folder/file ownership recursively. It’s been very useful!
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The fact that Andrew might have to run this at all means Windows (or possibly the manufacturer of his camera) has fucked up. He should not need to learn about this to use his files. Obviously he shouldn’t have permissions to system files but that’s clearly not what he actually wants.
Windows defaults to giving a user access to common folders like a desktop, pictures, etc. Most never need anymore access to internal folders.
The fact that Andrew has the permissions settings open enough to discover “owner” but doesnt understand what any of it is means and instead launched a “don’t tread on me” screed about his “dominion of all things mine” implies that he fucked up, not Microsoft.
How did his user account lose permissions to a folder of pictures?
He didn’t “discover owner” by opening any permission settings. He is simply asserting that he is the owner of the pictures he took, in a non-technical sense.
He doesnt talk about pictures at all. That was someone elses supposition.
It’s not clear from the snippet of text what the issue is, but it sure looks like he opened up the folder ACLs and found that his account wasn’t “Owner” for some folder/files, and now hes mad that he is being made to elevate his own account for that folder, because “He is the OWNER!” of the files in a property rights context.
Ah, ACLs, had the pleasure of working with these again last weeks.
It gets really curious when even the Arch wiki doesn’t really know what’s going on (talking about mask and effective permissions):
The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.
Reason: The original note about the --mask option (which was taken from setfacl(1)) was determined as inaccurate, but the new note does not seem correct either. See the talk page for details.
From trying, I can confirm that the info presented further down is wrong.
Once you read what it actually does and why it’s the way it is, it makes more sense - not that I remember it now - but at least there was a coherent design decision behind it
I want to say “Haha, Idiot trusting Microsoft”.
But honestly I want the same stuff he wants. Including modems in mobile phones. Including EVERYTHING I own.
There’s an OS you might like. It has no UAC, no file permissions, no sudo nor chmod, as it has no multi-user support, no antivirus and no firewall, no protection rings, not even spectre/meltdown mitigations, and most of all - no guard-rails whatsoever: You can patch the kernel directly at runtime and it won’t even give you a warn. And yet, it is perfectly safe to run. It’s called TempleOS and it achieves such a flawless security by having no networking support whatsoever and barely any support for removable media. If you want a piece a software - you just code it in, manually. You don’t have to check the code for backdoors if it’s entirely written by you… only for CIA at your actual back door…
Huh, didn’t realise Windows is on a level to be compared to TempleOS. And losing. Thanks for that.
What does ‘modems in mobile phones’ mean? Isn’t the whole thing a modem strapped onto a screen? What am I missing?
I think they just mean they should have control over the modem. They are all locked down and proprietary with known backdoors throughout history, effectively bypassing any OS level security.
A lot of phone modems ship with their own SoC (processor) running its own OS. It’s much smaller and slower than the main phone SoC but, depending on its implementation, it can have full access to all of your main processor’s memory through DMA.
I just saw discussions like this
So no, there are more parts to your phone. You forgot the whole part you, the user, solely interact with.
Andrew is going to get malware on his PC, guaranteed.
Me trying to modify games from the Xbox store.
Open the files in any non-windows system and do what ever the hell you want.
People talking shit about Andrew but I’ve had seriously weird issues with Windows throwing out odd permissions errors on seemingly basic shit on files that are 0kb after restarting and doing all sorts of basic troubleshooting including CMD Prompt and Powershell guides only for none of them to work.
It reeked of virus but never was. Just weird stupid shit that wasn’t easily explained, should’ve worked but didn’t, or various other things that the allmighty Lemmings here think is just beyond a google apparently.
FWIW I’m pretty sure it was straight up related to corrupted files in weird shared folder spots.
You have to pretend they don’t exist and never think about them again after hiding them then hopefully never remember or just reinstall because it’s been a couple years and probably good to do anyway.
Pebkac. Gui equivalent of chown perfectly working on windows and supports recursing into directories. If the questioner doesn’t know how to login as an admin they miss some absolute basic computer usage knowledge, and a general help forum thread wont help them.
Strong Disagree, the GUI equivalent of chown is a bizarrely long series of clicks that less knowledgeable users will easily get confused doing.
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I never said it’s good ux, but it’s working
You described it as pebkac - it isn’t - it’s an OS design issue.
If you read the thread they got an answer to their question, then OP posts this rant here like its a classic “windows is stupid” thing, while simply a user tries to do something which is too complex for them, and blames their lack of knowledge on the os.
Not to mention there is no admin anymore, it’s essentially a sudo style with it popping up asking are you sure.
This though really reeks of their son dragged and dropped their old files onto a new computer and didn’t set the NTFS permissions, and purposely set them up as a non admin so they wouldn’t bother them with “I got a new virus”. When I have an elderly relative ask for me to set up their computer I don’t give them admin rights
