Ubuntu 0-2 in the big time.

[noshellswill]

Gents:

I just prodded Synaptic to DLoad and install the geo-analytic proggie
GRASS. It runs - that's good. It runs only from the command-line.

What's worse ... the installed GRASS program remains unlisted by Gnome or
its minions, just like MATHEMATICA remains unlisted. That program also
installed and runs CLI without issue.

What gives? Two heavy_hitters in usrland installed , but unacknowledged by
Ubuntus' GUI interface? Doesn't Linux hire a bunch of pointy-headed
devils to run around the system finding out what's there --- and
report that to the owner of the system? Uhhh ... that would be me! Yes sir
I'd take a nice big-fat flashy auto-installed icon saying GRASS HERE!!!.

What else I wonder of usrland significance is/has_been installed yet
mums-the-word from my OS? If my fav WinME had done such a thing to OPERA
or F-PROT or AbiWord I'd be suspicious ....

nss
**************

[Michael B. Trausch]

noshellswill wrote in <pan.2006.05.21.03.37.45.862952@hotmail.com> on Sat,
May 20 2006 23:37:

> Gents:
>
> I just prodded Synaptic to DLoad and install the geo-analytic proggie
> GRASS. It runs - that's good. It runs only from the command-line.
>
> What's worse ... the installed GRASS program remains unlisted by Gnome or
> its minions, just like MATHEMATICA remains unlisted. That program also
> installed and runs CLI without issue.
>
> What gives? Two heavy_hitters in usrland installed , but unacknowledged by
> Ubuntus' GUI interface? Doesn't Linux hire a bunch of pointy-headed
> devils to run around the system finding out what's there --- and
> report that to the owner of the system? Uhhh ... that would be me! Yes sir
> I'd take a nice big-fat flashy auto-installed icon saying GRASS HERE!!!.
>
> What else I wonder of usrland significance is/has_been installed yet
> mums-the-word from my OS? If my fav WinME had done such a thing to OPERA
> or F-PROT or AbiWord I'd be suspicious ....
>
> nss
> **************

Short answer: Not all applications install into the menu structure.

Medium level answer: Some use old-style GNOME menu items for their
applications, and some use old-style KDE ones. Not so much on the *Ubuntu
distributions, but possible.

Long answer: If every application on the system were in the menus, they
would be simply not navigatable (is that a word?). Anyway, point is, you
can add it to the menu yourself, or you can put shortcuts on your K-panels
(or whatever the GNOME equiv. is, I haven't used GNOME in /quite/ some
time), or shortcuts on your desktop, and that's it. Not that hard, and
you're not going that far out of your way. *shrugs*. If that's too much
for you, then... I don't know.

--
Registered Linux User #417338, machine #325045.

A Bugless Program is an Abstract Theoretical Concept.

[noshellswill]

On Sun, 21 May 2006 04:40:09 -0400, Michael B. Trausch wrote:

<clip>
"

> If every application on the system were in the menus, they
> would be simply not navigatable

"
<clip>

I appreciate your answer ... including the above phrase. My
experience with displayed/installed programs?

In 25 years of continuous
desk-top PC use I have NEVER found display crowding an issue. Even
with a flat "iconized" useland --- as I prefer --- separating
utilities from main-line programs has never taken more than drag-N-drop
into a separate folder. So much for the practical ...

OTOH since usrland administration depends so much on visual clues it's
a serious security issue IMHO that Gnome fails to report a recently
installed executable. At that time, a useful option would be for Gnome to
offer the usr several program display options:

say ... : assert-able desktop icon / menu text listing / bury it !

Instead, you say and I have found , for some programs Gnome says nothing.
Will you bet the next rent-check on such a system? There's a whiff of
proprietary ... almost surreptitious behavior in this , and subject to all
sorts of abuse. Who determines what gets hidden and what goes displayed? I
bet this issue is enough to keep Gnome/*nix off lots of single_usr ,
self_administered boxes.

nss
*********

[Michael B. Trausch]

noshellswill wrote in <pan.2006.05.21.17.52.03.692729@hotmail.com> on Sun,
May 21 2006 13:52:

>
> On Sun, 21 May 2006 04:40:09 -0400, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
>
> <clip>
> "

>> If every application on the system were in the menus, they
>> would be simply not navigatable

> "
> <clip>
>
> I appreciate your answer ... including the above phrase. My
> experience with displayed/installed programs?
>
> In 25 years of continuous
> desk-top PC use I have NEVER found display crowding an issue. Even
> with a flat "iconized" useland --- as I prefer --- separating
> utilities from main-line programs has never taken more than drag-N-drop
> into a separate folder. So much for the practical ...
>
> OTOH since usrland administration depends so much on visual clues it's
> a serious security issue IMHO that Gnome fails to report a recently
> installed executable. At that time, a useful option would be for Gnome to
> offer the usr several program display options:
>

Windows applications can be guilty of the same behavior, actually. If you
install Microsoft Office, you only get shortcuts that start the major
components of the Office suite, but if you navigate to the program area of
the hard drive, you'll find that there are tons of GUI applications that
you can run there.

Also, Windows *itself* hides things away from the menu system. You can find
hundreds of usable GUI programs and tools under the %SystemRoot% hierarchy
at any time after installation. Installing of database servers and such
hide components deep in the menus, or not at all -- which is kind of sad.

Anyway, I stick to my point about every application being in the menu, being
a problem. My system itself has 2,265 binaries currently installed
in /usr/bin, including X binaries and the other graphical things. Now, I
know that generally, KDE picks up the things I install right after
restarting the kicker, or logging out/logging back in, and I don't have
issues with any of that, personally. Nor do I have any problem with the
system not seeing software that I have like xeyes or xclock, because if I
want to use those, I can start them just as easily from the command line.
I only generally use those from another machine over an SSH tunnel, anyway,
because I demonstrate to people the ease of remote computing by using those
sample applications.

I don't see that this is a security issue, either, so long as the user
doesn't make a habit out of running as a privileged user -- or a user that
has the capability to become a privileged user. The most that can be lost
is the user's data, and if the user is taking precautions and backing that
up, then it's rather trivial to get that back -- that is true for any user
of any system.

However, if you're going to be using a user account that has password-less
access to the 'sudo' program, or the root password doesn't exist and isn't
locked, then you run the risk of trojan horses being able to run amok
around your system. That's a security risk, but it's easily controlled by
the user without any great leaps and bounds of effort.

>
> say ... : assert-able desktop icon / menu text listing / bury it !
>
> Instead, you say and I have found , for some programs Gnome says nothing.
> Will you bet the next rent-check on such a system? There's a whiff of
> proprietary ... almost surreptitious behavior in this , and subject to all
> sorts of abuse. Who determines what gets hidden and what goes displayed? I
> bet this issue is enough to keep Gnome/*nix off lots of single_usr ,
> self_administered boxes.
>

I've never had a security issue arise out of an application not showing up
in the menu, personally -- and there are tons of things that you can add to
help make life easier, should you want. For example, if you wanted to, you
could start a new X11 session within an X11 session to test something out
before you use it for production or just for giggles if you want -- and
that's not in (most distributions') menu systems for KDE/GNOME/whatever.
In fact there are a lot of programs on my system that, while they can be
used standalone, aren't in the menu because they're generally used within
other programs, such as the KDE control center items -- screen saver items,
etc. -- and other types of helper applications. I don't have xdvi in my
menu, though I could if I wanted to, by putting it there. However, it's
just not popular enough in today's usage of a computer system for it to be
there. If you want to use it, it's quite trivial to open a terminal window
and open it that way, or you could just open a DVI object by
double-clicking on it. Some things just don't make sense in a menu, and
others do, and some aren't there because they're not so popular that they
would demand it.

That having been said, at least in KDE, there is a way to add things to the
menu by having KDE search the filesystem and add things that it knows how
to run, so that you can have them accessible at a single click if you so
desire, but you don't have to have them there, and they're not required to
be there for them to be used. It's a matter of preference, and in the way
that the menus in many distributions are set up, things that are popular
are present, and the things that aren't well, aren't. I have > 2000 items
installed that I could have set up in the menu system, but I certainly
wouldn't want that, it would be ridiculous.

Hope that kind of helps you to see the vastness of the desire to
have "everything" in the menu system. If you want to do it, you can, but I
wouldn't consider it a reasonable default, by any stretch of the
imagination.

--
Registered Linux User #417338, machine #325045.

A built-in, all purpose, thiingamabob.

[noshellswill]

On Sun, 21 May 2006 16:19:41 -0400, Michael B. Trausch wrote:

> noshellswill wrote in <pan.2006.05.21.17.52.03.692729@hotmail.com> on Sun,
> May 21 2006 13:52:

>>
>> On Sun, 21 May 2006 04:40:09 -0400, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
>>
>> <clip>
>> "

>>> If every application on the system were in the menus, they
>>> would be simply not navigatable

>> "
>> <clip>
>>
>> I appreciate your answer ... including the above phrase. My
>> experience with displayed/installed programs?
>>
>> In 25 years of continuous
>> desk-top PC use I have NEVER found display crowding an issue. Even
>> with a flat "iconized" useland --- as I prefer --- separating
>> utilities from main-line programs has never taken more than drag-N-drop
>> into a separate folder. So much for the practical ...
>>
>> OTOH since usrland administration depends so much on visual clues it's
>> a serious security issue IMHO that Gnome fails to report a recently
>> installed executable. At that time, a useful option would be for Gnome to
>> offer the usr several program display options:
>>

>
> Windows applications can be guilty of the same behavior, actually. If you
> install Microsoft Office, you only get shortcuts that start the major
> components of the Office suite, but if you navigate to the program area of
> the hard drive, you'll find that there are tons of GUI applications that
> you can run there.
>
> Also, Windows *itself* hides things away from the menu system. You can find
> hundreds of usable GUI programs and tools under the %SystemRoot% hierarchy
> at any time after installation. Installing of database servers and such
> hide components deep in the menus, or not at all -- which is kind of sad.
>
> Anyway, I stick to my point about every application being in the menu, being
> a problem. My system itself has 2,265 binaries currently installed
> in /usr/bin, including X binaries and the other graphical things. Now, I
> know that generally, KDE picks up the things I install right after
> restarting the kicker, or logging out/logging back in, and I don't have
> issues with any of that, personally. Nor do I have any problem with the
> system not seeing software that I have like xeyes or xclock, because if I
> want to use those, I can start them just as easily from the command line.
> I only generally use those from another machine over an SSH tunnel, anyway,
> because I demonstrate to people the ease of remote computing by using those
> sample applications.
>
> I don't see that this is a security issue, either, so long as the user
> doesn't make a habit out of running as a privileged user -- or a user that
> has the capability to become a privileged user. The most that can be lost
> is the user's data, and if the user is taking precautions and backing that
> up, then it's rather trivial to get that back -- that is true for any user
> of any system.
>
> However, if you're going to be using a user account that has password-less
> access to the 'sudo' program, or the root password doesn't exist and isn't
> locked, then you run the risk of trojan horses being able to run amok
> around your system. That's a security risk, but it's easily controlled by
> the user without any great leaps and bounds of effort.
>

>>
>> say ... : assert-able desktop icon / menu text listing / bury it !
>>
>> Instead, you say and I have found , for some programs Gnome says nothing.
>> Will you bet the next rent-check on such a system? There's a whiff of
>> proprietary ... almost surreptitious behavior in this , and subject to all
>> sorts of abuse. Who determines what gets hidden and what goes displayed? I
>> bet this issue is enough to keep Gnome/*nix off lots of single_usr ,
>> self_administered boxes.
>>

>
> I've never had a security issue arise out of an application not showing up
> in the menu, personally -- and there are tons of things that you can add to
> help make life easier, should you want. For example, if you wanted to, you
> could start a new X11 session within an X11 session to test something out
> before you use it for production or just for giggles if you want -- and
> that's not in (most distributions') menu systems for KDE/GNOME/whatever.
> In fact there are a lot of programs on my system that, while they can be
> used standalone, aren't in the menu because they're generally used within
> other programs, such as the KDE control center items -- screen saver items,
> etc. -- and other types of helper applications. I don't have xdvi in my
> menu, though I could if I wanted to, by putting it there. However, it's
> just not popular enough in today's usage of a computer system for it to be
> there. If you want to use it, it's quite trivial to open a terminal window
> and open it that way, or you could just open a DVI object by
> double-clicking on it. Some things just don't make sense in a menu, and
> others do, and some aren't there because they're not so popular that they
> would demand it.
>
> That having been said, at least in KDE, there is a way to add things to the
> menu by having KDE search the filesystem and add things that it knows how
> to run, so that you can have them accessible at a single click if you so
> desire, but you don't have to have them there, and they're not required to
> be there for them to be used. It's a matter of preference, and in the way
> that the menus in many distributions are set up, things that are popular
> are present, and the things that aren't well, aren't. I have > 2000 items
> installed that I could have set up in the menu system, but I certainly
> wouldn't want that, it would be ridiculous.
>
> Hope that kind of helps you to see the vastness of the desire to
> have "everything" in the menu system. If you want to do it, you can, but I
> wouldn't consider it a reasonable default, by any stretch of the
> imagination.

BT:

I see we disagree in nearly every fundamental of computer use. Prolly
depends on how you make your money and how I make mine. Given that, I
believe you error in not holding Gnome/*nix to the most rigorous standards
of transparency.

nss
*********

[Michael B. Trausch]

noshellswill wrote in <pan.2006.05.21.23.15.03.164427@hotmail.com> on Sun,
May 21 2006 19:15:

>
> BT:
>
> I see we disagree in nearly every fundamental of computer use. Prolly
> depends on how you make your money and how I make mine. Given that, I
> believe you error in not holding Gnome/*nix to the most rigorous standards
> of transparency.
>

I do, actually. That's why I think the way the system works is completely
acceptable. It would be entirely obtuse to have a menu systems with 2000+
items sorted through and down. My bookmarks menu has nearly 500 items in
it, in folders, and subfolders, and subfolders. It is acceptable for me to
navigate *that*, because I know what's in my bookmarks, and I sort it using
a quite hierarchial structure. However, I don't know of a user in the
world that would go through that many items to try to find a program in the
main menu.

Overloading the menus can cause just as much -- if not more -- damage as not
having a menu at all. It will get too confusing for a user, and they'll
jump away because it's got too many options and it will be too confusing.
I don't think you're quite grasping the gravity of the numbers I'm giving
you WRT the options that a user has. The average attention span of your
average user isn't enough to sort through menus -- that much I can tell
you.

- Mike

--
Registered Linux User #417338, machine #325045.

A better way to DoubleSpace your disk: DELTREE C:\WINDOWS