Linux Users: Get the Google Toolbar!

No really, I mean it....

[Nick_W]

Okay, I got IE6 installed on my RH9 machine and have successfully installed the Google Toolbar!

Hooray! ;)

Here's how: Download the trial version of Office CrossOver [codeweavers.com] from codeweavers.com. It's a slick application that emulates a Win environment using Wine that will allow you to install Office programs (word etc), IE6 and some other goodies. All done through an install wizard for supported WIn apps.

Follow the instructions, download IE6 and go get the toolbar. It took 2 download attempts for the toolbar to install but it did install and works perfectly.

The software costs $50 but you can try it for free for a month.

Have fun!

Nick

[eaden]

I'd much prefer it if Google supported the Mozilla googlebar project. For a company that uses 20,000 Linux servers, they should give something back!

[littleman]

>give something back

While I think it is cool that there is an option for the bar in Linux, I have to agree. Linux has made google's business model possible, it would be nice for them to return something back to the open source community.

[Nick_W]

It is rather rude isn't it?

Nick

[bakedjake]

Actually, they could probably benefit the community much, much more by opening any sort of clustering or control software they're using.

They have an advanced operation, and opening that sort of operation could open many possibilities for academia, research labs, and commercial endeavors.

The googlebar will only benefit us. ;-)

[peterdaly]

I just verified this to work. Had to try and install twice as well.

They are without a doubt getting their $54 from me. This just saved me from buying another PC so I could view PR!

It's fast too. I'm impressed!

-Pete

[bird]

Anyone has any idea what the security implications are of running IE with CrossOver on Linux?

[Nick_W]

Presumably any breach would only affect the fake Win environment. I'm not worried about it but it's a good point..

Nick

[dingman]

I'm not using Crossover, but I've got a Wine setup with IE and the google toolbar. One thing to remember about security is that depending on your Wine setup, the Windows programs likely have access to all the files on your machine that you do, as network drives. Look in .wine/config for sections like this:

[Drive Y]
"Type" = "network"
"Path" = "${HOME}"
"Label" = "Home"
"FS" = "win95"
                                        
[Drive Z]
"Type" = "network"
"Path" = "/"
"Label" = "Root"
"FS" = "win95"

The first gives Wine programs access to your whole home directory, which is probably (a) where you keep most of your hard-to-replace files and (b) almost certainly all readable, writable, and deletable by your user, which is who any exploit that took over a wine program would be running as.

The second gives access to every file available to Linux, and therefore endangers any file or directory your user can write to.

[Nick_W]

Thanks Dingman,

Where is that file located? (not in my home dir) and what might one do to secure it better?

Nick

[dingman]

Not that Blobfisk isn't a plenty helpful guy, but I don't see anything from him in this thread yet ;)

As for location of the file, mine is ~/.wine/config, but Crossover might have changed the name. As I said, I'm just using vanilla Wine + win98. Maybe look for it in a .codeweavers or .crossover folder?

Once you find it, perhaps the best way to secure it would be to go through all the [Drive *] sections looking at the path they give access to. If you don't need them, delete the whole drive. I might suggest paring down to only a C: drive and a temp drive. If you need to have an area where you can put files that are accessible by both Linux and the fake Windows environment, make a subdirectory in your home directory and set that as the path for one of your network drives instead of the home directory itself. That way, only those files are vulnerable to any exploits that might affect IE.