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Linux on the Desktop: Part Two

xn--gckvb8fzb.com

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Re: Linux on the Desktop: Part Two

#14

Post by viraptor »

mrtweetyhack wrote: post #10

NEVER click on a link that looks like that

That's not a great rule. What's different between `xn--gckvb8fzb.com` and `bobs-blog.com`? And why would a person hosting malicious payload use the first domain name?

If anything the `xn--....` is a indicating a non-malicious name, since anyone spoofing another service would go for a generic name or something slightly similar to "google", "microsoft", "paypal", etc.

(Unless you saw "マリウス" in the link - but that's a similar story - non-english character sets are completely valid and popular. They're not indicating malicious pages.)

Re: Linux on the Desktop: Part Two

#15

Post by viraptor »

samspenc wrote: post #3

Fascinating as the desktop computer and running Linux on it are, I find the blog's domain name (in Japanese, is it Katakana?) and HN's rendering of the URL even more riveting.

If anyone wants to convert those back, just a warning - don't do it blindly since there's a large number of confusable characters. At the very least, there's a table of the confusable characters available (https://util.unicode.org/UnicodeJsps/confusables.jsp) so you can bail out early.

Re: Linux on the Desktop: Part Two

#16

Post by maccam94 »

viraptor wrote: post #14
mrtweetyhack wrote: post #10

NEVER click on a link that looks like that

That's not a great rule. What's different between `xn--gckvb8fzb.com` and `bobs-blog.com`? And why would a person hosting malicious payload use the first domain name? If anything the `xn--....` is a indicating a non-malicious name, since anyone spoofing another service would go for a generic name or something slightly similar to "google", "microsoft", "paypal", etc. (Unless you saw "マリウス" in the link - but that's a s…

At one time it was a concern that malicious actors would spoof urls with unicode confusables. Chrome (and others, but unsure of the exact list) implemented restrictions on displaying unicode characters to try to prevent this: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/i...

Re: Linux on the Desktop: Part Two

#17

Post by dvh »

When you switch to Linux (desktop), you should seek something that Windows cannot offer.

I'm my case, it was possibility of having desktop where change for the sake of change is completely absent. My desktop is fully up to date, yet it hasn't changed visually since 2006. Every control and menu item is where it was 15 years ago, colors are the same, fonts are the same. I'm not using OS, I'm using apps. The best thing good OS can do for me, is not to get in my way when I run apps. I'm using jwm set up to resemble early gnome.

Re: Linux on the Desktop: Part Two

#20

Post by dijit »

dvh wrote: post #17

When you switch to Linux (desktop), you should seek something that Windows cannot offer. I'm my case, it was possibility of having desktop where change for the sake of change is completely absent. My desktop is fully up to date, yet it hasn't changed visually since 2006. Every control and menu item is where it was 15 years ago, colors are the same, fonts are the same. I'm not using OS, I'm using apps. The best thing…

This _can_ be true, but GNOME (for example) have drastically changed their UI paradigm in that time window.

It's quite nice as a power user, I use terminals and.. overall terminals and tiling window managers barely change.

But the pace of change can be jarring, and sometimes controversial:

GNOME2->3

init->systemd

alsa->pulse->pipewire

ifconfig->ip

NetworkManager->iwctl

A lot of the ergonomics _do_ change with Linux if you're not paying attention.

And this isn't to mention the default desktop manager changing between major versions of popular distros like ubuntu.

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