Post originally made on March 28th, when the video would automatically start downloading :/
[video file="4stones.mp4"]
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All posts for the month March, 2011
You may have noticed that I don’t like Adobe, and when thinking about it I really should put down the reasons why.
1. Support: Horrible support on linux.
My first blog post here was on the topic that Adobe flash was horrific, constantly crashing all the time, extremely laggy, it didn’t seem like an application that had a multi-billion dollar company behind it, and while it might be a little better now there’s still various software applications that Adobe makes that don’t run well on systems other than Windows.
To quote Steve Jobs,
Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.
They really don’t care about making great software or making it integrate well with the environment around it, don’t expect support unless you’re windows.
HTML5 on the other hand is platform independent and an open standard so it plays on windows as well as it plays on ubuntu.
2. Sup I’m Adobe Reader, where’s the food?
Adobe Reader X is nearly 43MBs.
Firefox 4 is 13MB, and I can tell you Firefox 4 does a hell of a lot more than Adobe Reader X, which is only meant to do one thing: Read PDFs.
There are many other PDF readers which are less bloated, and from that more responsive and faster to load than Adobe Reader.
In particular:
Windows: Foxit Reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
Linux: Evince: http://projects.gnome.org/evince/
3. 3rd party plugin
What happens if the browser you’re using doesn’t have that 3rd party plugin available for it…? Trying to build a web for everyone, not everyone who has adobe on their systems.
4. Security? never heard of it.
Adobes track record when it comes to security is quite laughable.
“PDF exploits are usually the first ones attempted by attackers,” said Mary Landesman, a ScanSafe senior security researcher, referring to the multi-exploit hammering that hackers typically give visitors to malicious Web sites. “Attackers are choosing PDFs for a reason. It’s not random. They’re establishing a preference for Reader exploits.”
There really is nothing else to say, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader increase your attack surface massively.
5. Adobe Flexnet
Adobe in your boot loader? It’s more likely than you think.
“Colin Watson, one of the Ubuntu developers, published in his blog information about Windows applications making GRUB 2 unbootable. Users of dual-boot Windows/Linux installations may face the problem, which boils down to particular Windows applications (Colin does not name them, but users point at least to HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet) blindly overwriting hard disk content between the MBR and the first partition destroying information already stored there, in this particular case — the ‘core image’ of GRUB 2 (GRand Unified Bootloader) making the system unbootable.”
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/10/08/28/2112208/Some-Windows-Apps-Make-GRUB-2-Unbootable
6. Security: Adobe Reader + Adobe Flash
http://www.google.com/search?q=adobe+flash+security+vulnerability
Need I say more?
7. Security: “Flash cookies/Super cookies”
Cookies are fine, they have plenty of uses, but sometimes people take things a little to far:
- Stay on your computer for an unlimited amount of time
- Store 100 kb of data by default, with an unlimited max
- Couldn’t be deleted by your browser
- Send previous visit information and history, by default, without your permission
http://www.imasuper.com/66/technology/flash-cookies-the-silent-privacy-killer/
Thanks adobe! :/
There’s more but I can’t really be bothered, the above is more than enough incentive for me to avoid Adobe like the plague.
Changes:
- Moved back to opera(after something like 5 years) from chrome as my default browser, firefox as backup.
- Faenza Icons, very nice, I like.
- high cpu usage is explained by my return to folding after 3 years, co-incidentally I’m trying to heat the room up but even with all 6 cores at 100% cpu usage the heat coming out of my machine is barely warm.
- thought about going to win7 in order to make my 5850 do something for a change (gpu folding.), decided not to.
- On a different linux project finally got fed up with my stock htc hero rom, rooted it, cyanogenmod 6.1 and now she’s pretty again !
hurray!
Logs have all been uploaded here:
Reinstalling from LiveCD
If you cannot boot from GRUB 2 review the section Boot Problems and Rescue Mode. If a reinstall becomes necessary follow these instructions. Two methods are presented; both require booting from a LiveCD (Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala or later version). If the first method does not work, follow the second method, which is more complex and contains more options and instructions.
SIMPLEST – Copy GRUB 2 Files from the LiveCD
This is a quick and simple method of restoring a broken system’s GRUB 2 files. The terminal is used for entering commands and the user must know the device name/partition of the installed system (sda1, sdb5, etc). The problem partition is located and mounted from the LiveCD. The files are then copied from the LiveCD libraries to the proper locations and MBR. It requires the least steps and fewer command line entries than the following methods. If for example Windows is on sda1 and Ubuntu is on sda5, and Windows has overwritten the MBR, then the target for grub installation will be /dev/sda5, and the MBR in the boot sector of sda will be re written for grub.
- Boot to the LiveCD Desktop (Ubuntu 9.10 or later).
- Open a terminal by selecting Applications, Accessories, Terminal from the menu bar.
- Determine the partition with the Ubuntu installation. The fdisk option “-l” is a lowercase “L”.
-
sudo fdisk -l
If the user isn’t sure of the partition, look for one of the appropriate size or formatting.Running sudo blkid may provide more information to help locate the proper partition, especially if the partitions are labeled. The device/drive is designated by sdX, with X being the device designation. sda is the first device, sdb is the second, etc. For most users the MBR will be installed to sda, the first drive on their system. The partition is designated by the Y. The first partition is 1, the second is 2. Note the devices and partitions are counted differently.
-
- Mount the partition containing the Ubuntu installation.
sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
Example: sudo mount /dev/sda1 Note: If the user has a separate /boot partition, this must be mounted to /mnt/boot Note: If the user has a separate /home partition, this must be mounted to /mnt/home. Encrypted home partitions should work.
- Run the grub-install command as described below. This will reinstall the GRUB 2 files on the mounted partition to the proper location and to the MBR of the designated device.
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX
Example: sudo grub-install –root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda
- Reboot
- Refresh the GRUB 2 menu with sudo update-grub
From: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Reinstalling%20from%20LiveCD