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KDE GUI

Konqueror Supporting ActiveX 172

Posted by CmdrTaco from the coming-soon-to-a-desktop-near-you dept.
brunes69 notes that you can read the news that konqueror is supporting ActiveX. I saw it being done at at LinuxTag (as well as wine running The Sims!) so its coming. This ought to do a lot to give Linux users compatibility on sites the force shockwave or other obnoxious activex plug-ins.
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Konqueror Supporting ActiveX More

Konqueror Supporting ActiveX

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  • Re:Something that you need to know (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Doesn't matter. Wine in itself isn't i386 only. The binaries on the other hand are, since they're compiled for i386 and you only can get them in binary form so there's no way you could run those activex binary plugins on any other architecture than i386.

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by dmiller ( 581 )
    Why on earth would we want to support and perpetuate the horror that is ActiveX? The more platforms it is supported by, the more legitimacy it has as a "de-facto standard".
  • while the merits of activex are surely a subject of personal taste (/me being on the "shove it up where it hurts" side) - unless I am horribly mistaken, one of the "features" of the thing is that it digs so deeply into the OS that it can allow a ton of things not usually available to whatever software accesses it.

    which, in turn, leads to the nightmare of security and stability concerns most of us associate with activex.

    so the question is - is this similiar for kde now? will a misbehaving activex element trash all of kde and/or X and/or the system?
    I don't use kde, or I would've tested before posting. but I am very afraid of Linux going the same way of "let's integrate until everything is just one pile of crap" that windos has recently moved. boundaries between applications are GOOD. they stop misbehaving or malicious code from affecting areas it has no business in. kde (gnome, too) is already highly integrated. I do have serious concerns that the DOWNSIDES of integration have been overlooked.

    that, and I do absolutely agree with the other posters that not everything is good just because it is compatable or because windos also does it. now that Linux is mature, we should stop emulating others and start moving above and beyond them. there's so much stuff that could be done in a better way in the same time it takes to mindlessly copy it.

  • xmovie does a good job at displaying quicktime movies. why not contribute to that project instead of using activex to do something that could be done much better in native code ?
  • As far as I'm concerned, konqueror does as good or better on all web pages than netscape, and it has a much smaller footprint than it's major rival, mozilla. (although mozilla has been getting better recently)

    I'm afraid of a slippery slope however, ActiveX stuff is fairly cool (hooray, I can play games online!) the last thing we need is to copy everything. I would hate for anything *nix to gain the VBscript crap, if only because of security concerns.
  • Then follow instructions for 3D acceleration. Maybe 20 minutes max to get it running at full speed with the installed X. If you need every frame, upgrade to X-4.1 (rpms available).

    I still remember installing utah-glx to play quake3 as root and quake2 I only played in svgalib 320x200 :-)
    --
  • Mozilla might support ActiveX soon see: http://www.iol.ie/%7Elocka/mozilla/mozilla.htm#plu gin_impl Of course this is a seperate project independent of mozilla.org. It will probably be available as an _optional_ plugin.
  • > Ok, can anyone pull, of the top of their head, a site that still uses ActiveX components over Java, Flash, ?

    Wild stab: microsoft.com, perhaps? (not sure though, they seem to be going whole-hog on DHTML these days instead)

    And Flash *is* an ActiveX control on IE.


    --

  • Either you're doctv@peachlink.com [ale.org], or you simply forgot to give proper attribution. Nice job getting the mod points though. The strange formatting was an obvious give away.

  • Since when? Shockwave is a shockwave plugin.

  • amazing then that flash works on my linux boxen [macromedia.com], under netscape, with no activeX in sight.

    shockwave, of course, doesn't.

  • 404 File Not Found The requested URL (d%3CAHREF=http://dot.kde.org/994747675/) is not found.

    The server cant find the page with the ActiveX info. How do you think it will run once we hav ActiveX installed ??
    Its a big conspiracy !!! they are taking over the world with 404.

  • Thanks for making the point that ActiveX controls and Netscape Plugins are virtually the same thing.

    Accessibility:
    ActiveX - full ability to integrate with the HTML tree and expose rich accessibility functionality for all users
    Plug-Ins - not much


    Isn't this what "LiveConnect" is for?
    --
  • Thank for the info. I've also heard that they are dumping Java applet support -- if so, they are probably willing to break NS plug-ins too. (Only affects QuickTime on my system.)
    --

  • My, my, aren't we on a high horse today? Before you go out and trash some other Joe, remember that not all of the herd out there are programmers or have the background to be one.
    And your point is ?

    Frankly I see no (nada, zero, zilch) right for people who don't contribute to a project to have a say in it. That's all there is to it.

    If joe-not-a-programmer wants to have a say in how something should develop, (s)he should be doing something equally useful for the project. Documentation. Testing. Bug reports and feedback. Implementation issues. There's a ton of useful non-programming tasks that any project can benefit from.

    OTOH, nothing gets a programmers back up faster than some idiot (a technical term for those not working on the project, but also non-constructively criticising it :-) comes along and adopts the moral high ground with their antagonistic "position" on it all.

    At the end of the day, if joe-programmer is working on s/w to instantly convert christians to devil worship, it is up to him/her. Frightening if the s/w works (would we notice? :-), but it's the programmers choice how (s)he spends any personal time.

    Personally I think Mono is an excellent idea - it's win-win. On the one hand, Microsoft could lose control of their life-blood of applications, or the licence will turn out to be prohibitive, and they get exposed manipulating standards once again... Where's the downside ?

    Simon

  • Nope!

    First VB and LookOut so that we all can share the joys of "Melissa" and "I LOVE YOU"

    Then BSOD

    :-)

  • Taco (Score:1)

    by Hammer ( 14284 )
    Us mere mortals usually do a preview of a post before submitting it. You shoud try it, it makes you look less sheepish :-)
  • Then you need to be getting the web developers, who use windows, to use your technology instead of QuickTime and Shockwave. Good luck... Once you've accomplished that, there will be no need to worry about this. Until then, people want to be able to view websites that are made with software that works only on Windows.
  • No-one said you have to use it. It's a separate plugin. Do you have to use _all_ the Netscape plugins in order to use Netscape?
  • The Quicktime plugin works in IE6... if that means that the NS-plugin interface is present, then it probably is.
  • I can't really use Linux at work, because it doesn't support very many desktop application standards. I can't open many office documents (and Star Office cannot be relied upon to open all documents, plus it's incredibly slow on a PIII800/512M!!!), nor can I read HTML email consistently, nor can I easily and consistently deal with attachments. Microsoft Office is *anything* but a true standard. Office is what we call a *defacto* standard: it is only a standard in the sense that it is commonly used. Let's step out of this picture for a second: Way back in the days of 9600 BPS modems, US Robotics had a standard called "High Speed Technology" (HST). HST was only a standard because USR played Microsoft tactics: they sold their modems to BBS and online service operators at a loss. Because most of the BBSes and online services had HST modems, many regular users popped down the US$500 retail price for the 9600 BPS modems. Then came V.32. V.32 was a true standard: it was hammered out by what was then the CCITT and is now known as the ITU. (The same committee that sets telephone standards around the world). USR had to come out with "dual standard" modems to try to compete. Eventually, they came out with 14.4kbps HST, but it was too late. USR had already started to slide in market share and profits. With *real* standards, the prices for high speed modems dropped. No proprietary manufacturer could dominate the market. 9600 bps and faster modems became a *commodity*. And that's what needs to happen here. We need to adopt a common, open standard: XML. Microsoft Office 2000 and later plays lip service to this, but truely we do not have interoperability between office suites that claim to support "XML." I cannot take my OpenOffice.org documents, which use "XML" and put them into Microsoft Office, which claims to use "XML" or into KWord, which uses "XML." If we can all agree on ONE flavor of XML, then then stuff like Microsoft Office will become a commodity: and this is exactly what Microsoft doesn't want. Because if they have to compete head to head on features and price with open source alternatives, they KNOW they'll lose. We want REAL standards. Anybody hear us????
  • Yeah, I can name one. www.newhomebids.com [newhomebids.com]. That is one, and its almost all ActiveX crap. You have to be a member to use it, and you have to download a bunch of crap, even a browser.
    --
    _|_
  • This sucks. Is it so much to ask for somebody to write a decent web browser and then STOP? There's no need to add all this useless cruft. I want a small, fast web browser. I don't want an application platform. I don't want to run activeX shit. I want a browser which can handle HTML and CSS well, without extra bloat, and that's ALL I want it to do. Somebody needs to just focus on making a good browser.

    Dammit.
    --

  • what about (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Does this mean, activex security holes now work on Linux too?
  • You probably thinking about Code Weavers [codeweavers.com] who announced their way to run Windows plugins...

    Let's see what Code Weavers did - they emulated the part to run Windows version Netscape plugins. Meaning - if you install a player/plugin which supports Netscape (like all of them *currently* do) - then you'll be able to use it under Netscape, Mozilla and Konqueror (with Konqueror's Netscape plugin support). The whole thing will be just a Linux Netscape plugin. Now - 2 things: A. they released it for embedded devices, and it costs the developer money. B. It only supports those players who supports Netscape plugins. They will release a Desktop version later this year if I understood correctly. Now - let's see what Malte and Niko (the reaktivate guys) did:

    The reaktivate idea is quite simple - a small layer added in higher priority to nsplugins layer in Konqueror. Now - when an app wants to install ActiveX, wine will run and the application will things this is Windows and MSIE, so it's kosher to install ActiveX. Then Reaktivate will download the ActiveX, asks the user premission to install and installs it on the wine [you don't need any windows DLL's - one of the authors doesn't have any windows installation at all - so he's making it sure the Reaktivate development can be run without any windows stuff needed - so fake Windows directory which wine can create is enough). Now - regarding the security - I understood that they'll add layer of protection, and probably the signature check for any ActiveX before installation. Add to that the your actives will run CHRoot, and as a user (not root), then you got a pretty good protection. The Reaktivate way will let you install new plugins in case the software house decides that Netscape plugin is not necessary because of a very small browser market [for example]

  • Actually - the problem is pretty simple:

    Run your VMWare (if you have it on your machine) with Windows - or reboot to Windows.

    Now install the Quicktime player - it doesn't matter which components (minimal is ok)

    After it'll finish - watch the new widgets on the Quicktime windows - they are totally different - and thats what today Wine is not supporting...

    If there was a way to run the Quicktime player without those widgets (with standard widgets) - then you could run QuickTime under Wine...

  • that is mostly true; it depends on that first part, which is getting wine to emulate an i386 for you. At the moment this is almost nonexistent (listed at 5%, no serious effort, from the Wine Status page).

    However, if it ever is, then Wine will end up being a modern replacement for tools like Wabi (which was very cool at the time) instead of just a toy/tool for us Intel users.

    Until then, there's always Bochs, at least, but that's pretty slow; Plex86 is not quite ready for prime time, and DOSEmu doesn't have that much support for i386 emulation, but more than Wine does...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • AOL could pull that off, because they have a near monopoly. But no web site today has a near monopoly. Virtually every web site is struggling. If CNN or Yahoo or The New York Times shuts me out tomorrow, there are plenty of other options and I'll never look back.

    --

  • Speaking of Mozilla, I doubt that they will ever support ActiveX. Mozilla is serious about web standards, and ActiveX is not a standard (Flash support can be excused as support for legacy plugin API designed by Netscape).

    The khtml hackers are very concerned with standards compliance. Feed Konqueror 100% standard compliance code and it should do exactly what you want, it it does not, please file a bug report [kde.org].

    Supporting a non-standard feature doesn't necessarily break standard compliance. Even Mozilla has plenty of workarounds for broken pages (uncloses table/td/tr's etcetera) which make it more useable.

  • Nah. Those are what Windows programmers call "owner-draw", meaning Quicktime draws them instead of relying on Win32 widgets. So they're not an issue for Wine. Anyway, bleeding-edge Wine CVS just had patches submitted that allows QT5 to play (in full-screen mode, windowed is being worked on).
  • Flash is not Shockwave. Flash is one of several Macromedia technologies under the Shockwave brand. However, when developers and designers refer to Shockwave, they almost always mean Director Shockwave, for which there most certainly isn't Linux or Unix support of any kind. Nor would I expect it soon unless AOL pays Macromedia to develop it for the appliance market. Director is complex stuff.

    The Mozilla steering committee may never support proprietary technologies (other than, say, Java), but you can bet your sweet patootie that AOL has no such reservations when it comes to official Netscape browser releases.

    If a decent sandboxing solution comes along and the most popular public ActiveX controls without native Linux equivalents work well under it, I'd expect ActiveX to turn up in the Linux appliance version of the Netscape browser in short order... unless their lawyers determine that Microsoft's restrictions that prohibit use of any of their DLLs bundled with an ActiveX control on non-Windows OSes opens them to risk. Whether the Mozilla CVS maintainers choose to merge it into their trunk is another story, but the Mozilla team clearly doesn't care whether or not anyone wants to use their browser. They're happy to treat it like an academic project. How else can XUL be explained? Any developer that cares about user experience would have wrapped Mozilla/Netscape 6 in native UI frontends a long time ago, as the Galeon folks and others have, and let XUL wait for hardware to catch up with its processing needs.

    And plugins are utterly nasty to install under Unixes, and not much better under Windows and MacOS, what with no systemwide plugin directory. It's high time AOL hired a goddamn tech evangelist to make the rounds to Macromedia, Real, Adobe and other major plugin providers to help them package their plugins as XPI autoinstallers like first-party Mozilla/Netscape 6 components already are, so that installation can be made as easy and fluid as ActiveX.

  • The guy/gal plagiarized [ale.org] from something apparently written in 1997 (copying up until the guys name), so don't expect anything modern in there.

  • Flash content is currently viewable by more net users than Java is This is why you are starting to see Flash ads all over the place...

    That in my book is the most compelling reason to disable flash, and plugins in general: vastly improved signal to noise ratio.
  • You'd hit a larger target market if you used Mozilla's "Install This Plug-in" feature, which is pretty much just like ActiveX except without the crypto sigs.

    The nice thing is since Mozilla is nice friendly open source tech, it will be easier to socially engineer them into installing as root.

    On the other hand, it would probably easier to put up "PornSlurper 2000 .001" on Freshmeat and just put rm -rf / in the makefile.
    --
  • "Other than Quicktime, not that many internet sites actually use ActiveX controls"

    QuickTime is not an ActiveX control -- it's a Netscape-compatible plug-in that is supported by IE.

    BTW, I heard that IE6 has dropped the NS-plugin interface. Any beta testers willing to confirm or deny?
    --
  • Maybe we need to make the open source browsers be more configurable to lie about their browser/OS string? Its not completely without precendent, since IE at least used to have "Mozilla" in their string to fool site recognition. A really cool ability might be to let a user specify browser strings on a per-URL basis and remember the setting for future visits... If web developers found out that a large percentage of their visitors were lying with their browser string then maybe they'd be more incentified to build sites that work for more people? On the other hand, they might take it that there were less people using other platforms because fewer people would be turned away... Hmm...
  • That's all well and good, but...

    Konqueror is not Linux. KDE/Konqueror runs on any POSIX/X11 system, and work is being done to get it on systems without those.
  • I don't think people are seeing the big picture here. ActiveX is more that just a crappy web technology. OLE2 (ActiveX) is the really what Javabeans are to Java. Wine cant (until now?) run software built with OLE2 components. If I understand correctly, this opens the door to Linux running tons of modern Windows software.
  • [...]
    every damn time I read something about good comercial software here, most people just complain that it's not free!
    You give me a good product, price it reasonably, make it work right on my platform, I'll pay. When Opera releases 5.1x (the one with the CSS bugfixes) on Linux, I'll likely buy it. Back when I was still using Windows on a regular basis, I bought Cookie Pal [kburra.com]. If I had been interested in programming on i386's back before Linux, I would've bought Turbo C. I actually did buy Quicken back before they mandated Internet Exploder. I've bought several Linux box sets, and an OpenBSD diskset.

    Point is, no, there are some radicals out there who insist on using 100% Free Software, and I can see that POV, but I think there are a number of folks who don't mind paying good money for good produce. Personally, I get ticked at people who try to enforce a monopoly on me. On the other hand, I'm also about to throw Netscape off my box, frankly because it sucks and there's better stuff (Mozilla, Galeon, Konqueror) out there, and the number of sites that need the Real True Netscape is fast approaching zero. (It may be zero alreddie, I just haven't confirmed that to my satisfaction yet.)

    Don't make me subscribe, don't force-bundle software on me, particularly if it sucks, don't cost me an arm and a leg (Photoshop), I'm happy.

    --
    These are my ideas, you can't have them

  • I believe the Codeweavers Netscape Windows plug-in bridge (also Wine-based) allows the use of Quicktime plug-ins. I tried to check on this but the Codeweavers web site seems to be down right now. This would probably be a safer and more secure way than using an ActiveX control
  • I encourage you to give it a whirl. Perhaps you could start from the "bloated" codebase you so despise and trim from there.

    I like konqueror, don't get me wrong. But it still has huge issues with some things. And I'd fix it, but I don't have the self-discipline to wade through other people's code and figure out exactly what it's doing. I just don't work well that way.

    Once you release your version of the browser that does as little as possible, I hope you won't mind if people bitch about it.

    People bitch about things that I do all the time. I take their bitching without complaining, and if they have a valid point I make note of it and try to fix their objections. It's all part of being an open source developer. But I'm allowed to be the bitcher as opposed to the bitchee every once in awhile, aren't I? :)
    --
  • No-one said you have to use it. It's a separate plugin. Do you have to use _all_ the Netscape plugins in order to use Netscape?

    I know, but how about fixing Konqueror first? Konq's getting quite good, but it still has huge issues, especially with Javascript and font handling. And hell, recent Mozilla builds even beat it in terms of speed (compared to Konq 2.1.2)!

    'course I probably shouldn't talk until I try 2.2, but since I'm on dialup, I'm gonna wait until it's out of beta (or at least in FreeBSD's ports so I can just set it going and come back later)
    --
  • Here's my set up:

    Wine version: 0.0.20010510-3
    WMP version: 6.01.05.0217 (stock w/ Win98, may be SE. I don't boot into it, only use it for wine).

    on a Debian 2.2 (unstable) system.

    The only libraries that are "native" instead of "builtin" are "mciavi.drv" and "mcianim.drv". I don't think that I customized this setup very much.

    I generally have to run it as root, which SUCKS, IMHO. Other than that, most stuff works for me, except the "favorites" menu and I haven't tried to upgrade it. But hitting a URL or watching a dl'd movie are both fine. I don't use it very much, so I can't say that I've tested it extensively...
  • ... after which we can run nearly all the windows security holes directly on linux! I can't wait!
  • Sure, this may provide a lot of convenience, but I've noticed as of late a few things setting and following dangerous precedents. For one, playback of avi, asf, and wmv files. Many of these nowadays use codecs for audio or sound that have no native implementation. Projects like avifile and mplayer work around this by using the win32 files. This provides really nice functionality, but discourages many who would work on native solutions, as this solution seems 'good enough'. Of course this means that non-x86 systems are completely out of luck, and that even while in linux we can still be tied to Microsoft binaries....
    I think the same can apply to ActiveX through wine, and to some extent wine in general. So far it hasn't worked well enough to make people see it as a 'good enough' solution, but as it gets more complete, developers are going to get lazier about implementing native equivalents, as has happened with those multimedia codecs..
  • This is what Microsoft *does* want !

    USR tried to corner the market. Unfortunately, modem markets aren't easy to corner, because 1) people don't upgrade modems much, and 2) it's easy for competitors to fully duplicate the technology.

    On the other hand, Microsoft will leverage its desktop monopoly </CLICHE> to lock people into its commodity formats. People upgrade Windows or Office or IE fairly regularly, and it's easy for MS to invent protocols that are difficult to duplicate, and easy to break support for competitors' products if they start getting dangerous.

    Looking at the USR example, it would seem that the only way MS can be brought down is by other operating systems fully duplicating Windows, and then providing added benifits. But with billions of dollars a year going into obfuscating every protocol they can get their hands on, this goal still seems a long way off. A quote from the Samba 2.2 (recently released) docs has stuck in my mind: they're proud to have finally got DOS wildcard matching working the same as DOS does! (after how many years?)

    You or I may find Windows-matching futile, and prefer the strategy of enhancing Linux's strengths to grab new customers, but we shouldn't begrudge anybody else the change to try and beat Windows on their own turf.

  • Um, that's the link in the story, and it's Slashdotted. Looks like kde.org can't handle a bit of load? Maybe if they didn't run a gui on their webservers ;)

    I never quite understood Slashdotting: you ought to get through at least some of the time to the URLs, even if slow; unless the actual server in question has crashed under load (which is quite unacceptable)
  • Ummm...

    Have you taken a serious look at the W3C standard for CSS2?

    It does contain several references for things such as page breaks (page-break-before, page-break-after, etc) and also for elements which should be printed on every page, e.g. headers and footers.

    I used to think that these features were lacking and valid reasons to not use XHTML1+CSS2 for word processing, but they aren't. I have, as before stated, yet to find a valid reason why XHTML is not a decent word processor format.
  • If we can all agree on ONE flavor of XML, then then stuff like Microsoft Office will become a commodity...

    That's the problem. XML is not the proper answer, because XML happens to be a "language definition language". Your post makes as much sense as saying "Let's use SGML as the standard web page language!" Which sounds almost feasible until you realize that SGML is a tool used to *define* standards like HTML, which can then be used as standard languages.

    My vote for a standard word processing language actually would be XHTML1+CSS2. I can't name any features off-hand that I would ever use in a word processor that can't be done in XHTML with CSS... but I'm hoping someone out there can prove me wrong and show me why I'm an idiot. : )

    -chris
  • Will Konqueror conceivably run the Windows Terminal server client?

    That would be pretty cool.
  • There's nothing wrong with doing your own thing, but when people ask, "Why should I switch from Windows to Linux?" they want to be able to see that they can do everything in Linux that they could in Windows, but better. There are lots of things that I use that don't emulate the Windows equivalent, like an email client. Compare Mutt and Outlook Express - they're worlds apart. On the other hand you need compatibility because of "standards" that have been imposed by Microsoft's dominance in the software market. I want to be able to use Excel spreadsheets in Linux and I want to do so in a way with which I'm familiar.

    Lots of Linux software packages are, as you put it, "a poor imitation." I want a great imitation. I want all the features of Microsoft software without the bugs and frivolous add-ons and license agreements. There are certain Linux applications that I like better than the Windows equivalent (GAIM is one even using TOC, but would certainly be far superior if Oscar was still permitted). I like cdrecord and cdparanoia. I like NFS better than Windows Shares. LFTP rules. But when I need to type a formal document or do some browsing on a bloated website, I'm tempted to boot to Windows.
  • Codeweavers Crossover [codewavers.com](another WINE project) is running both Quicktime and ActiveX and is produced as a regular netscape compatible plugin which has been tested on Konqueror, as well as Mozilla and the various Netscape releases. Codeweavers are selling and supporting it right now, and releasing it Open Source in a couple of months time.

    Still, that's no reason to stop writing to Apple. In fact, if they did a port, I'd start writing letters to sites using WMP telling them they should offer Quicktime. :)
  • Even though I give him shit for not taking the time to support a still prominent browser (ns 4.x), I applaud him for not putting a big "you suck, get a new browser and use windows and ie" sign up for all non ie5 users.

    I have this exact message on my blog [blogspot.com]. Do you know why? Because the W3C published the HTML4 and CSS1 standards EONS ago!

    The only reason why people don't bother to update their browsers is because no one is making them! If sites continue to support NS4, people will continue using it - and that makes the standards that were developed by the W3C absolutely useless.

    So stop whining about 'lack of NS4' support and get a modern standards compliant browser!
    </rant>

    *grin*

    PS> I'm not usually like this, but the 'web platform' sucks. We need to fix its current state of stagnation. Let's go!
  • The whole reason Linux has been successful as a server is that it emulated/implemented the standards of the day, namely UNIX.

    Now, what needs to happen is for it to emulate/support/implement the standards for desktop applications, which, as much as we hate to admit it, are mostly owned by Microsoft. Suggesting to someone that they create yet more "standards" for browser plug-ins or document file formats makes no sense.

    I can't really use Linux at work, because it doesn't support very many desktop application standards. I can't open many office documents (and Star Office cannot be relied upon to open all documents, plus it's incredibly slow on a PIII800/512M!!!), nor can I read HTML email consistently, nor can I easily and consistently deal with attachments.

    ActiveX isn't a big deal, because not many sites use it, but our intranet application, for example, does make good use of it, and my ability to use our intranet is limited on Linux.

    The alternatives Linux provides are implementations of standards, not in alternatives to the standards themselves.

  • How is the Intel-compatible platform a monopoly? There are other [amd.com] companies [cyrix.com] producing x86 compatible chips, aren't there? (Just as it's not the Windows platform that's the monopoly but the product-- that's why WINE isn't collusion with the "enemy".)
    my plan [gospelcom.net]
  • I whish it would. But it won't.

    An OS with a very fragmented 5%(10%?,15%? it wold change nothing) percent of the desktop users cannot 'embrace and extend' a single-owned OS with > 70 % of desktop users.

    And I don't think anybody is trying this. What they are trying is a more subtle tactic (maybe not even done at conscious level) called infiltration. Porting open-source apps to the other platform. Augmenting interoperability (document filters, plugins, ... ). Blending MS technologies on an Unix-like OS. Until there will be no more reason to not to use Linux or *BSD as desktop.

    Unfortunately, it works both ways. There is a serious risk that OSS loose some of their 'design purity' (if you believe that) in the process. here will be less implementation of Good Things (tm) and more Reasonable Compromises
    But no cry. This is in the nature of engineering.

    /SAGA_MODE ON
    And until everybody may have the sources of anything developed, there will be enough developers using their free time to implement the Good Thing, for the sake of Software Well Done.
    /SAGA_MODE OFF
    I hope.

  • If you want Windows plugins, Windows ActiveX controls, and Windows (DirectX) games, just run Windows! I do not understand why the people who want these things switched to Linux in the first place!
  • Unfortunately, it's not enough to be able to host ActiveX controls, you have to provide support to install and script them as well. Neither of these things are easy. Installation is a problem because it uses MS proprietary technology for packaging (CAB files) and installation (INS files). Scripting is a problem because Konq would have to be map JS calls via an OLE typelibrary or through Wine into the control's IDispatch interface. I doubt it does either.

    This means ActiveX is pretty limited and next to useless in Konq. It's a kewl feature and handy for shockwave, but that's about it.

    BTW you can run ActiveX controls in Mozilla or Netscape (on Win32) if you want but you're still face the same limitations.

    • Flash and Shockwave are separate things!

      Shockwave is the web player for movies created in Macromedia Director, which is bitmap based. Flash is created in the Flash authoring environment, which is vector base. Flash was made for the web, while Shockwave was made to be able to play Director movies on the web.

    • Both come in two flavors - netscape plugin and activeX control

      Flash runs as an activeX control under Windows IE only. On all other platforms you have to use the netscape plugin. That plugin is available for PC, Mac, and Linux. The Shockwave plugin only works on PC and Mac. MM never ported it to Linux.

    • Well written Flash files are *small*

      Flash is a *vector* format stored in binary form. This makes it *tiny*. If you know what you are doing you can do an insane amount in less than 20k.

    • Flash content is currently viewable by more net users than Java is

      This is why you are starting to see Flash ads all over the place...

  • Konqueror has an "User Agent" that you can ask to send a specific string for each website.
    At the moment, 16 different strings are supported ranging from Lynx over MSIE (various versions) till wget.

    I used it, it works flawlessly.

  • I am not the original poster, of whom JohnZed asks:

    Do you personally spend lots of time trying to get Microsoft-supported games to work on Linux? I sure don't.

    I did buy the official linux quake3 from the shelf at Fry's, only days after it appeared. I spend "lots of time"... well, about two evenings, of installing various Mesa, libgart, kernels, Xfree versions, etc. In the end, I played it for a few hours at the lowest resolution and lowest quality and the 'bots kicked my ass. I was truely impressed by the visual quality of the high quality settings, but I never did manage to get more than a few frames per second on my matrox g400 (selected specifically because of matrox's good disclosure to the xfree team).

    JohnZed does have a good point, that "we" suggests involvement as a developer in the project. As my own little (non-game) project [pjrc.com] has been building up a user base, I see a lot of users with strong opinions about development. It's easy to brush them off as "back seat drivers" or "armchair critics", but sometimes, some of them actually write a bit of code and get involved in the project... and it's hard to predict which ones those will be.

  • There is a principle, buried deep at the core of the Internet standards [faqs.org] process, that reads:

    "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send"

    This, too, is one of the basic qualities of free software. By following this simple principle, robustness and interopability are maximized. This is one of the things that make free software so wonderful. It tends to be made modular, and people just add plugins for whatever new functionality they need.

    Java? sure.

    Tcl [scriptics.com]? sure.

    Shockwave? sure.

    Flash? sure.

    ActiveX? sure.

    Any other language? write a simple little plugin yourself :-P

    GNU/Linux can be both an alternative, as well as a superior implementation.

    -- Agthorr

  • Following the KDE naming convention, the obvious name for this has to be ...

    ... wait for it ...

    KraptiveX
  • Set the power button suspend, not power-down You can do it on an Asus P2B motherboard every easily, probably on many others.

    Configure the Linux kernel APM support to ignore user suspend.

    Problem solved. Very few people know about the 4 second override shutdown or that there still is a switch in the back. (Those that do, hopefully will be clueful enough not to "helpfully" power off your PC.)

    Except now, the user may run away screaming from the room, saying your computer is possessed by demons.
  • Sadly, monopoly isn't exactly the right word for the concept that I was trying to express, but it is the closest one that I can come up with. Sure, other people produce x86 chips. Maybe, one day other folk will make ia64 chips, but what if all microprocessors had to be ia64 compatible to be commercialy viable?

    Even if lots of companies made them, consumers choice would still be restricted and that was what I meant by a monopoly. With just one viable architecture, the world would be denied access to potentialy useful inovations which broke compatibility. Examples....

    • 128 bit processors
    • Funky vector processing systems (a la PPC)
    • Clockless processors (assuming such things could be made to work).
    • Totaly wild concepts that no-one has thought of yet

    At the end of the day I want a choice of OS and a choice of architecture. Perhaps I am wierd.

  • We already have that. It's called mozilla-bin.

  • while saying "but we don't care what our users want, we'll only code what we think is cool"

    Free software is a movement - a community. We (and I can say "we") don't exist to create something wonderful for someone else (you), we exist to create something wonderful for ourselves and our peers.

    I recently started writing my own text editor. I know there are a thousand text editors out there - I didn't like any of them. So my text editor will (when finished) do exactly what I want, how I want, no more and no less. If others want to use it, they are Free to. If they don't, that's fine. If they want to change something, they can do it themselves - that's why they have the source - not beg me to do it.

    wishus
    ---

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • , I heard that IE6 has dropped the NS-plugin interface

    ...extinguish.... ahhhh M$ at its best. Now it cuts off the airsupply...

  • Unfortuantely they can't. It appears that MS took out a patent back in 1995 for their blue screens and GPF errors. They could port an auto-without-warning-reboot module though?

    I smell an Open Source GPL'd grassroots project in the making!

  • Hopefully, before this feature gets released into mainstream Konqueror versions, they'll have developed some way of sandboxing ActiveX code so that it can't cause any damage on the system.

    This will probably be most useful for corporate users where their company's intranet sites have lots of ActiveX controls. Other than Quicktime, not that many internet sites actually use ActiveX controls.
  • No, ActiveX started out as "Object Linking and Embedding" back in the early Windows days. Microsoft greatly expanded it, and changed the name to activeX.

    ActiveX is really just a specification for binary compatibility between objects, programs, and the OS across any language. If you support the standard interfaces and binary types, ActiveX doesn't care what language you wrote that in or how things are arranged behind the scenes. In other words, it is a well-defined contract between clients and servers, with the servers being just about anything and the clients being pieces of code that provide a service.

    ActiveX is why I can buy any one of thousands of OCXes or DLLs already prebuilt to do one thing or another, then instantiate them from VC++, VB, Java, scripts, et al and use them with great ease.

    When you think about it, the concept of embedding an ActiveX control in a page isn't that radical. If I already have written an OCX that does THingX, and I wanna do that in my page, why not just tell the page to load the OCX? At least from Microsoft's thinking. Otherwise, I have to write a separate plugin that does ThingX, thus wasting my time.

    I find programming on the Windows side infinitely easier in part due to ActiveX. If I want to write a code editor with color syntax highlighting, I can spend a lot of time writing and debugging it myself, or I can just buy one of the many OCXes already out there for that purpose, or download one of the many projects that are open source.
    -- russ

  • I'm very impressed with the entire KDE desktop.

    And Konquerer is great.

    This is one step closer to be being able to provide Linux to my customers.
  • Seriously, Scott, if they can use OLE2 (ActiveX) then Wine could be fortified and noone would use that cheap hooch we call Windows to play games on or run other software.

    And then what would Bill G do with all his plans for world domination?

  • The primary goal of Linux for the past few years seems to have been "imitate and emulate Microsoft." ... We spend more time trying to get Microsoft-supported games to run on Linux than we do writing games for Linux.

    Linux ports of games just don't sell very well at this point; Linux-only games don't sell at all. What is the solution? Embrace and extend.

    Consider this: If you can buy Windows for $150 or you can download a Linux distro that runs all your Windows apps and your Linux apps for free; which option will you pursue?

    The idea here is that Linux (and XFree86 and WINE) should embrace the Win32 API and extend upon that functionality with native Linux apps.

    If Linux could do everything Windows can and more, and do it cheaper, why would anyone buy Windows?

  • According to the Macromedia site, Shockwave includes the Flash player, and the Flash player is an ActiveX plugin.

    More benefical is Quicktime. No more crummy RealPlayer streams, QT is much nicer.

  • Just install Java, and have (safe) fun! ActiveX is worthless by comparison...though it is quite a technical accomplishment to get it running at all... ;-)

    Don't try to use it on LinuxPPC though! =)

    186,282 mi/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

  • Slashdotted almost immediately (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:33AM (#94073)

    DATELINE JULY 9, 2001

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    KDE Web Browser Konqueror Gets Activ(eX)ated

    Konqueror Embraces ActiveX, Plays Shockwave Movies

    July 9, 2001 (The INTERNET). Nikolas Zimmermann [mailto] and Malte Starostik [mailto] today announced the availability of reaktivate for Konqueror [konqueror.org], KDE's web browser. Reaktivate enables Konqueror to embed ActiveX [microsoft.com] controls, such as the popular Shockwave [macromedia.com] movies, for which no native Linux/Unix solution exists. Reaktivate relies on the WINE [winehq.org] libraries to load and run ActiveX controls.

    With this addition, Konqueror now enables KDE users to take optimal advantage of sophisticated websites that make use of Microsoft Internet Explorer plugins, Netscape Communicator plugins [konqueror.org] for Linux and Java applets, as well as KDE plugins designed using KDE's KParts [kde.org] technology.

    According to Malte, the reason he and Nikolas implemented reaktivate is rather simple: it broadens the spectrum of web sites accessible to Konqueror, and it was possible.

    Successes and Limitations

    Theoretically, Reaktivate can eventually be used to embed any ActiveX control into Konqueror. Currently, however, not all ActiveX controls are compatible with reaktivate. In particular, the Microsoft Windows Media Player [windowsmedia1.com] cannot be installed using reaktivate (though it is not known if a player which is already installed will work with reaktivate). Thus it is likely there exist other ActiveX controls which will not yet work with reaktivate. Work is ongoing to increase compatability with other ActiveX controls, including the Apple QuickTime [apple.com] plugin.

    So far, however, reaktivate has been successfully tested with the following ActiveX controls:

    Note on Security

    Install ActiveX controls only from sites that you trust. Microsoft's ActiveX technology has often been criticized for weak security. Those controls are dynamic libraries that are executed exactly like any other piece of code installed on the user's system. This means they have full access to the file system, the system registry etc. As a means to establish the users' trust in the controls a web site wishes to install, every ActiveX control is cryptographically signed and carries a certificate issued by an authority known to the web browser (like VeriSign [verisign.com]). A control that has no signature or no certificate or if they are invalid will not be installed.

    With reaktivate the situation is similar: the installed controls can call every WinAPI function provided by the WINE libraries and therefore have access to WINE's registry and all files visible to the WINE installation. The current implementation of reaktivate will ask the user for confirmation to install a new control, but it will not check the embedded certificate and signature. This is due to technical reasons as well as limited time. Therefore we strongly advise to install controls only from sites that you trust. To save your files from malicious controls, you might also consider using this feature only from a seperate user account that has no access to your main user's files. Reaktivate will not run from the root account.

    Installing Reaktivate

    Source code for reaktivate is freely available under a Free, Open Source license from the kdenonbeta module [kde.org] in KDE's CVS repository [kde.org] and its mirrors [kde.org]. See the KDE website [kde.org] for information about how to get a module from CVS. You only need the toplevel, admin and reaktivate directories from kdenonbeta. Before compiling, get the latest CVS version of WINE [winehq.org] (a snapshot will likely not be new enough). Next, apply all patches from reaktivate/patches-for-wine/ against the WINE sources and build/install WINE. Finally, you can build and install reaktivate.

    Disclaimer: reaktivate is not in any manner sponsored or endorsed by, affiliated with, or otherwise related to, Microsoft Corporation [microsoft.com].

    Thanks to Andreas "Dre" Pour [mailto] and Navindra Umanee [mailto] for assisting in drafting this release.

  • You confuse between Flash and Shockwave - many people do - specially since Macromedia called it Shockwave flash, but they are 2 creates with some similarities - but they target different world each..

    Example - Shockwave can do 3D (using hardware renderer or software one - depends on your DirectX [on Reactivate it will be probably running with OpenGL thanks to the WineX team]). Flash - not

    There are 2 different players - Flash 5 (which is available to all popular OS's and then there is Shockwave 8.5 - which is only available under Windows and Mac (and now soon - anything that can run Wine)..

  • Re:ActiveX still lives? (Score:3)

    by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:48AM (#94075) Journal
    Plenty of "run of the mill" plug-ins can be delivered via ActiveX. When I installed Windows ME on my new PC, I hadn't been browsing (using MSIE) for half an hour before it offered to install the Macromedia Flash player for me - courtesy of an ActiveX control.

  • Re:Need to Get Priorities Straight (Score:3)

    by JohnZed ( 20191 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @10:06AM (#94076)
    > We spend more time trying to get Microsoft-
    > supported games to run on Linux than we do
    > writing games for Linux.

    We? Who is this "We" you're talking about? Do you personally spend lots of time trying to get Microsoft-supported games to work on Linux? I sure don't.

    Maybe you should replace the word "We" with "a large number of people who are writing applications that they find useful and sharing them for free out of the goodness of their hearts." Then, your post will make perfect sense.

    --JRZ

  • Maybe it's because I'm a Mozilla user... (Score:3)

    by slaker ( 53818 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:22AM (#94077)
    ...but what's the big deal about ActiveX support? Other than some web-sites that are strictly internal to the companies I've worked for, I've not been anywhere I *HAD* to have ActiveX.

    I thought it was already dead as a general use technology.

  • Security Holes (Score:3)

    by alanjstr ( 131045 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:26AM (#94078) Homepage
    Just keep in mind all the security flaws that ActiveX is known for. If you read the info, it recommends running it under a separate user ID than your usual one, to protect your files.

  • Re:Something that you need to know (Score:3)

    by HuskyDog ( 143220 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:47AM (#94079) Homepage
    This sort of things seems to me to be one of the great moral problems of Linux. The more we enable the use of closed source i386 only code the less incentive there is for the creation of equivalent open source (and thus cross platform) competitors. On the other hand, it would clearly be crazy to deliberately not develop simple working solutions to effectively force the creation cross platform equivalents.

    Mind you, at the end of the day I am convinced that 90% of Linux users (and /. readers) complain about OS monopolies whilst not giving a damn about a potential platform monopoly. So perhaps it doesn't matter anyway.

  • COM objects are semantically equivalent to Java classes, but also provide the ability to discover what interfaces exist at run time, via QueryInterface. This important feature is being introduced to Java through the JavaBeans Spec 1.0, via the BeanInfo class ("introspection").

    Introspection has been around in Java for a couple of years, now; that spec is from 1999, for example. Java version 1.1 introduced class-level introspection, available without explicit programmer support (which the BeanInfo idiom requires).

    In other words, the phrasing above is inaccurate in suggesting that introspection is something (currently) new to Java, or requiring changes to (current) JVMs.

    --

  • Re:Don't panic! (Score:3)

    by garett_spencley ( 193892 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @02:18PM (#94081) Journal
    Isn't this a huge security risk?

    I'm personally a little tired of hearing about security risks relating to ActiveX. There has been a lot of news of security problems related to ActiveX, but those problems have been the fault of IE's implementation of it. Not the technology's itself.

    I like to relate ActiveX to a gun. When used properly it can be a great tool. When used improperly it can be very dangerous. ActiveX is actually quite useful and when implemented properly is just as safe as any other peice of software. Saying that ActiveX itself is a huge security risk is like saying that the domain name system is a huge security risk because bind has been known to have a lot of security holes.

    And for those who think "well it's just another crap m$ technology to try and replace better, already existing technologies" the only thing I have to say is that ActiveX (like almost all MS 'innovations') was actually developed by a smaller company that was assimilated by MS. MS didn't create it themselves so stop saying ActiveX sucks just because it tends to be associated with MS.

    --
    Garett

  • Ok, can anyone pull, of the top of their head, a site that still uses ActiveX components over Java, Flash, ?

  • This doesn't require a lot of brainpower, people (Score:3)

    by Gruneun ( 261463 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @10:29AM (#94083)
    Why is it so hard to understand that this is a useful feature and helpful to establishing this OS as a useable alternative?

    Of course Linux users don't like the idea of ActiveX sites. We realize that ActiveX limits us to a Microsoft OS and certain hardware. But, these developers realize that a Windows user who feels restricted by using a Linux OS isn't going to switch to it. How many Linux users run a dual-boot or second Windows machine for games? I run Windows on my main machine because I don't have an alternative for some applications I consider important. I use Linux for everything else that I possibly can.

    As long as we have developers creating alternatives, we attract more users and increase the number of Linux machines. The developers here should be commended.

  • Great but... (Score:4)

    by Alan ( 347 ) <arcterexNO@SPAMufies.org> on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @09:58AM (#94084) Homepage
    This is good news. I'm not a K user, but this still affects the entire linux community, and I think it's a good thing. Inter-operability with other OSs and applications is what makes linux immediately superior to other OSs :)

    The problem with supporting these "windows only" plugins is that web developers are STILL filtering their sites based on OS and browser string. Even though my browser (galeon) is perfectly able to display http://www.shockwave.com [shockwave.com], I go there and get a "platform not supported" message for EVERY FSCKING PAGE on their site. Someone in the office managed to get in with either Konq or Opera by changing the os and browser string to windows/ie5, but this is not a valid option in my opinion.

    Even if galeon or konq suddenly had the ability to view shockwave files, they would still not be allowed into the site, as on every page there is a browser/os check. Now I know this is not true for all sites, or perhaps even a majority of them, but it is something that affects non-windows and non-IE users every day, and I have no idea how to fix it.

    Web designers have it in their ability without doing much. A friend of mine supports all OSs and browsers on his site even though it has heavy use of CSS and all the "new" tricks. He could write a huge amount of java script and multiple pages to display different things based on the browser, but he simply supports HTML4 (which is fine for ie, mozilla, galeon, ns6, etc) and strips all CSS for others. So while netscape 4.x doesn't look as pretty, the information is all there.

    Even though I give him shit for not taking the time to support a still prominent browser (ns 4.x), I applaud him for not putting a big "you suck, get a new browser and use windows and ie" sign up for all non ie5 users.

    I guess the trick is getting the web developers the information that non IE browsers DO support the latest standards and look just dandy.

    Oh, and shockwave.com... you suck :)

  • Security (Score:4)

    by navindra ( 7571 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:29AM (#94085) Homepage
    Before people start flaming about security:

    This is only a developer's release, not ready for KDE Prime Time, and the security issues are already being considered. There are several options existing to protect Unix users including proper use of non-priviledged accounts (perhaps by setuid'ing reaktivate to nobody), chroot, sandboxes... etc. And after all this, KDE will probably still not enable ActiveX by default on any system. Remember, Konqueror does not even enable Java or JavaScript by default yet.

    As for the usefulness of ActiveX in KDE, one of the main purposes of the developers is to help companies with an investment in ActiveX controls (perhaps on their internal sites or intranet) to migrate over to KDE systems. As a plus, of course, us users may get to enjoy Shockwave and QuickTime for which no free software solution is in sight.

    So celebrate this for what this is: A rewly hack validating the KDE and WINE technologies that the Free Software wourld has brought us.

    Cheers,
    -N.

  • Re:Maybe it's because I'm a Mozilla user... (Score:4)

    by ravrazor ( 69324 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:34AM (#94086)
    What would the big deal be for ActiveX support on linux?

    The obvious answer: the same as its use on Microsoft platforms; expose
    COM's binary, language-independent, object interface standards.
    (The networked version of this, DCOM, uses RPC for transport.)

    COM is at the heart of what Microsoft has called OLE these many years,
    and as time has passed there has been semantic erosion of their distinction.
    ActiveX controls are the successor to OLE controls (*.OCX), which are
    the successor to Visual Basic (*.VBX) controls. Such controls are the
    bread-and-butter of contemporary corporate PC software development,
    as well as the business of a thriving industry of third-party control makers,
    not the least of which is Marietta's MicroHelp, recently acquired by an
    ambitious Internet firm.

    COM objects are semantically equivalent to Java classes, but also
    provide the ability to discover what interfaces exist at run time,
    via QueryInterface. This important feature is being introduced to Java
    through the JavaBeans Spec 1.0, via the BeanInfo class ("introspection").
    To quote Microsoft, (May 23, 1996 Draft)
    "The integration of Java and COM can be achieved by just making
    changes to the Java VM, and not adding any new keywords or
    constructs to the Java language."
    Visual J++ 1.1 includes Wizards that allow you to use ActiveX objects as
    Java classes and vice-versa.

    However, COM objects are instantiated with native code, not
    on a "platform-independent" Java Virtual Machine. Cross-platform
    congruence or differentiation depends on the implementation
    of the object on each platform, rather than on the implementation
    of the Java Virtual Machine on each platform. In this aspect, one might
    compare ActiveX objects to Netscape plug-ins, rather than Java classes.

  • What's this "we" business, pale-face? (Score:5)

    by slothbait ( 2922 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:49AM (#94087)
    > Should we be developing substitutes or alternatives for ActiveX instead of trying to recreate it?

    Who is this "we" you speak of? Are you doing any development for any open source project? Specifically, are you working on Wine? If not, then it is not your "we" to consider. Obviously, the people working on this find it worthwhile. If you feel that other projects should be worked on, then devote your effort to those. The developer effort of the Wine project is not your's to command.

    > Get your priorities straight: Linux ought to be an alternative, not a poor imitation.

    Those are *your* priorities. They happen to be mine as well, but that isn't the point. Developers have their own goals, so you shouldn't expect them to work toward *your's* instead.

    In particular, I think Miguel is overly fond of copying Microsoft. It's not how I would develop Gnome, but I'm not the one doing it...Miguel and the others are, and they will do it how they see fit. But you and I have no authority over them, so they will continue to develop as they please.

    --Lenny

  • Re:Great! (Score:5)

    by Rob Kaper ( 5960 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:35AM (#94088) Homepage
    /me waits for KDE zealots to praise this while dissing ximian over .net... oh the irony...

    Both developments has their good and bad sides.

    ActiveX support can be very important in multi-OS work environments and for many on-line banking sites, for example.

    On the other hand, sandboxing it and turning it off by default doesn't sound like a bad idea. But don't worry, as long as this requires Wine CVS and as long as the activexproxy is a program in kdenonbeta, it won't be installed by default on your distribution.

    Same with the new Ximian developments: embracing and cooperating with SOAP sounds like a good idea.

    I _would_ be very careful about .NET development since it is basically Microsoft's proprietary lock-in platform to make sure SOAP will give them _more_ control, not _less_, but cooperation is good. Even so, it is not like we KDE people are totally against SOAP support [zork.net], some projects already use it.

    Furthermore, I like to stress that ActiveX support originated as a proof-of-concept and "cool factor" development. The responses we received at LinuxTag confirmed this.

  • Finally... (Score:5)

    by Ole Marggraf ( 20336 ) <marggrafNO@SPAMgmx.net> on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:30AM (#94089) Homepage
    ...I can deactivate ActiveX support under Linux, too. Great!

  • QuickTime as well (Score:5)

    by Masker ( 25119 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:38AM (#94090)
    Well, there's another, more important, piece of work going on according to the article. They're trying to get QuickTime working as well! This is much more important than (bad, security flawed) activeX. Being able to watch movie trailers, streaming media from more sources, etc. is much more fun and useful than shockwave.

    Wine is good, but I can't get it to run QuickTime, though I try with every revision. I can reliably get Windows Media Player to run under Wine, but that's not good enough. This is one place where Linux sucks; we'll never get decent streaming multimedia support (Real doesn't cut it!) until someone licenses the codecs and releases a product (which will cause all the GPL freaks to scream because they'll want to charge for it; you may think I'm flaming, but every damn time I read something about good comercial software here, most people just complain that it's not free!).

  • The Force (Score:5)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:29AM (#94091) Journal
    This ought to do a lot to give Linux users compatibility on sites The Force shockwave or other obnoxious activex plug-ins.

    Konqueror is getting support for The Force? Sweet! Or is it just Force-compatible? Sigh... I was so looking forward to saying,
    You have failed me for the last time!
    to Internet Explorer... .

  • Something that you need to know (Score:5)

    by _ganja_ ( 179968 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:22AM (#94092) Homepage
    There is one thing that isn't to clear in the press releases: As Wine is i386 only, the support for activeX is of course only available for KDE running on Intel I386 architechture.

  • Re:Security (Score:5)

    by TrumpetPower! ( 190615 ) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @09:50AM (#94093) Homepage

    Blockquoth navindra:

    (perhaps by setuid'ing reaktivate to nobody)

    Ack! No!

    There's a common misconception out there that nobody has some special super-unpriveleged status. That's not the case; nobody is no different from any other account.

    The user/group nobody should only be used as it was originally intended, to limit access with UUCP. If you're not using UUCP on your system, you should be able to remove nobody and the system shouldn't even know the difference.

    If you make something suid or sgid nobody, then you're giving that something and anybody/anything that runs it access to important parts of your UUCP subsystem, if said sybsystem exists.

    If you make two things suid or sgid nobody, you're giving both access to UUCP and you're giving them access to each other.

    If you make both your Web server and your database server run as nobody, then nobody has become almost as powerful as root! Run unknown foreign executables as nobody as well, and you'll deserve what you get.

    People, please don't use nobody for anything. Instead, create a new account just for that one special purpose. Your Web server should run as user httpd (or www or whatever you choose). Your datbase server should run as user mysql (or whatever). Your name server should run as named. If one gets compromised, it only has access to that one subsystem (though, granted, even that can be tragic).

    For what it's worth, OpenBSD has no files or directories owned by either user or group nobody, though a few things do run as user nobody (such as the cron job to update the locate database and the fingerd and identd daemons).

    b&

  • Oh great... (Score:5)

    by b0z ( 191086 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:20AM (#94094) Homepage Journal
    ActiveX is one of the things everyone *HATES* about Internet Explorer.

    What's next, are they going to port the BSOD to be some daemon that runs and randomly crashes the system to be more compatible with Windows?

  • Don't panic! (Score:5)

    by update() ( 217397 ) on Tuesday July 10, 2001 @08:40AM (#94095) Homepage
    Reading the comments on the LinuxToday and dot.kde.org discussions of this work, I was struck by how negative so many people were. To preempt a lot of the same complaints here:

    Why is KDE relying on ActiveX? Shouldn't we be developing a better technology instead of using Micro$oft's?

    Leaving aside the question of who the "we" is who is always invoked in such remarks, this is a clever, useful hack by a couple of developers that's in kdenonbeta. No one is proposing to build KDE around ActiveX, no one is telling companies to stop making native plugins and it's not like a significant drain on resources went into making it.

    Isn't this a huge security risk?

    On the KDE site's discussion, Malte mentioned they were working on a chroot-based sandboxing method. This is still a work in progress and they tell you not to use it on sites you don't trust. And for God's sake, don't run it as root!! It's not going into the 2.2 release and anyone who is capable of installing it today ought to have the sense to run it carefully.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

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