Despite my years of tinkering with Linux, I find the printing framework (CUPS) still lags what you can get on Windows or Mac. Most people might never notice the difference, but when I need something out of the ordinary, I can’t do it on Linux. We all know that while some printer manufacturers do turn out nice drivers for CUPS, they never go beyond the driver itself by providing the rich software controls with their own packaged drivers for Windows. On the other hand, you also don’t have to worry about running those huge, fat printer control packages on Linux that bog down your Windows computer. Still, I sometimes need what Linux will probably never provide in terms of printed product. That most of the world is quickly abandoning paper output means this will become irrelevant soon enough, but for now, I have to run Windows for some things.
The headache of running Windows is that it remains unsecured by design. It’s not as if you can’t make Windows pretty tight against most malware, but doing so has always been the domain of serious and secretive MS engineers and expensively trained technicians. There are a wealth of policy tools built into the professional grade versions of Windows used in many corporate networks, but they are obscure and challenging to implement. Most of these are very sensible and really should be set by default, but MS is all about convenience and lowest-common-denominator. Your Home Premium Windows box lacks those tools. The underlying restrictions still work, but the suite of policy tools is part of the difference in price compared to the Professional version or higher.
Implementing those restrictions sensibly for you is what CryptoPrevent does.
It’s pretty simple. Download the free version of “setup.exe,” launch it and accept the defaults, then click “Apply.” You’ll have to reboot, but once it comes back up, chances are really good you’ll never notice the difference in how your system acts. Relaunch the application and hit the “Test” button to see if it works as designed. Only rarely does it fail and the site offers some guidance. Honestly, folks: This thing will disable a really large swath of malware out there today. The changes it makes should be the default on Windows for home users.
Another smart habit is simply using web browsers that lack all the bells and whistles for general surfing. I always keep multiple browsers installed, in part for testing, but also because each has different strengths and works better for one site or another. Most browsers allow you to disable lots of features, but it can be inconvenient unless you understand how to create additional profiles on the same browser you normally use. Even then, the browser might still do some things that are risky. One of my favorite browsers is called D+. It began as the Windows version of Dillo, available on Linux and BSD for quite some time. The current version of D+ actually works better than Dillo. You’ll need to run through the configuration options and test things to see how they work. You make the changes, close it, and then relaunch before they take effect.
The rendering is really quite different and takes getting used to. If you’ve used Lynx a great deal, you’ll recognize the layout is very similar, as both tend to ignore columns and tables. What you’ll see is usually more like what cellphone and tablet users see as the “mobile version” of most sites in a plainly vertical display. If you read the longer version of the description of D+, you’ll learn a lot of common browser features are left out on purpose. A crippled and simplified browser protects you from bad stuff, yet allows you to read the text and view most static images. A few sites won’t work at all for Lynx or D+, but that’s what “full feature” browsers are for.
If you really want to run Lynx, as I often do, you really should work through the Cygwin Project. Run the installer and check in the various categories like Networking and find a checkbox for the “lynx” package. The installer will take care of adding anything else needed to run Lynx. I rather like this excellent visual tutorial, even though it’s primary purpose is to allow running an obscure software project called PhysioNet. The point is, that particular page will show you how to get Cygwin installed and set up to run. You can adjust the size of the terminal window to suit your tastes via the usual context menu. It’s also a really great way to learn the Linux CLI without running a virtual machine. Lynx running from Cygwin is actually a better experience than it is on Linux because it reliably renders more common symbols and special characters that tend to disappear in the Linux version.
Hello, Mr. Hurst!
Getting printing to work under linux is challenging indeed. Those migrating from windows are probably not familiar with the command line utilities for printing, like lp. The headaches grow larger for network printers, as well as for printers aimed at typical users.
I’m not sure how technical you would like to take your printing, but you seem to value your computing security. If you’re willing to learn some technical information, you might try the TeTeX family of publishing programs for *nix. They were developed in the days of Emacs, before huge wysiwyg editing programs, but generally outperform. They’re actually still used quite a lot in the reference material publishing industry, where control over formats needs to be very precise.
Thank you for the article. You write very well on your technical/unix posts. I can’t say I understand your spiritual posts all too much, but you write them with conviction nevertheless.
Thanks, Mr. Nunez. I have used derivatives — Lyx and Texmacs — but that was as close as I could stand to get. Those were quite nice for school papers, but I also have to meet the more common readers and that has turned out to be an entirely different game. My ebooks publisher demands Word format, and LibreOffice tends to do odd things with that, so I’ve had a couple rejected until I got my hands on an old copy of the real thing (Word 2k runs well under Wine). For actual paper printing I really need my WordPerfect. I still have my copy of WP8 for Linux, but no Linux to run it on, so I’m using something more recent on Windows. I have way too many years invested in WordPerfect to forget it all.
Still, your comments do signal ideas others might find useful. I really think people should use what works best for them. In my computer ministry I always give the client what they demand.