Recent Security vulnerability in Skype

Derek Broughton wrote:
> John wrote:
> 
> 
>>What about the hardware the installer doesn't see? Examples
>>USB DSL modems (I recall an alcatel "stingray" works but you have to
>>load its firmeare)
>>PC cards one might plug into a laptop
>>PCI cards one might plug into a desktop (or server) machine?. Most of
>>_my_ PCI cards are later purchases
>>USB devices (other than that DSL modem)
>>Firewire devices
>>Printers
> 
> 
> How is this any different than for Windows users?  They routinely have to
> install the software that comes with the device.  Our users can take their
> existing machine and download from the package sources.  It might be nice
> to have a pretty "Add New Hardware" gui...

I thought the idea was to be better than Windows, not as bad.

> 
> 
>>>If you _do_ want to use the old drive in a new machine, it's not rocket
>>>science to install the required packages beforehand.  In any case, the
>>>user should have the choice to not install restricted software.
>>
>>I'd probably beyond the non-technical user. Think the people who think
>>Windows and OS X the absolute limit.
> 
> 
> Then we need that "new hardware" gui. 

Umm. I'm not convinced. On the weekend I had my laptop, was far from my 
my install CDs, no internet. What if I borrowed a whatsit from my mate?

>>If, OTOH, you want a system that "just works," then when you come to
>>upgrade to a new system or just add bits, you really dom't want to waste
>>time and money hunting up drivers or mucking round copying disk drives.
> 
> 
> I don't want to waste my disk space on all the tons of software I'll never
> use.  I could buy a Mac if I wanted to do that...

Save more by making your filesystem manually, using less than 5% spare 
space.

> 
>>I'm still coming to terms with SuSE, but it seems there that if you want
>>to configure some hardware that requires a driver, then it notices that
>>and installs it.
>>
>>I'm not entirely convinced with SuSE, but it certainly has _some_ things
>>to teach Ubuntu fans.
> 
> 
> Ubuntu (and Debian) _can_ do that - it's present in the base installer.  I'm
> not sure why there's no obvious way to do it later.

SuSE does it, if needed, _after_ installation. It happened, for example, 
with the internal modem; SuSE didn't install the driver until I chose to 
  configure dialup.