Yet another Linux on the desktop article

[Brian Kelsay]

Knoppix will automount a USB memory stick.. More precisely, it will create a desktop icon for it 
and each partition on your HDD.  You can right-click and mount and change to read-write.  Mandrake 
is the only other distro that does this, that I know of.  On any distro you could probably turn on 
this feature.
Floppies still require a click on the desktop icon or a mount.  It doesn't mean all users can mount 
any drive or partition.  They still need permission to do this.  As has been said, if a person has 
physical access to a machine and either a boot floppy or LiveCD, the box can be 0wned in a matter 
of moments.  Knoppix might take a bit longer due to its long boot time, unless I were to boot 
directly to the CLI.

Brian Kelsay

>>> Uncle Jim <jim at jimani.com> 07/31/04 02:06AM >>>
On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 12:59:29PM -0500, Brian Kelsay wrote:

> Whoa, Rex.  There are some valid issues.  Maybe I worded too strongly.  I had only skimmed the 
articles when I first linked them.  On a full read, I realized that there were issues they brought 
up that were already solved.  For example, automounting and

You have automounting?  You mean you'll mount my floppy with no questions asked?  If so then you
can kiss security goodbye.  If "desktop ready" means total root access to anybody with a floppy
in their pocket then I'm glad Linux doesn't have any.  I knew there was a good reason why I don't
care about desktops.
-- 
Jim