Ubuntu 11.04 Lets You 'Test Drive' Applications Without Installing

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/03/ubuntu-11-04-lets-you-test-drive-applications-without-installing/

by jagtesh • 15 years ago

62 15 15 years ago

lifehacker.com.au

nbpoole2• 15 years ago

Can I test-drive the Terminal on their remote system? :P

StavrosK3• 15 years ago

Why not? It's probably an EC2 instance they can reboot anyway, and you don't get root.

nbpoole2• 15 years ago

Until there's a local root exploit. ;)

My point was simply that this feature carries with it some very large security implications. I'm sure the people developing it are aware of that and will do their best to mitigate any potential issues.

samuel1604• 15 years ago

It seems that the new buzz word in the apps ecosystem is to test-drive before buying after amazon we have ubuntu now doing that (although not technically a app-store)....

sedachv2• 15 years ago

Notice the QtNX client in the video - this is powered by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NX_technology which is a sort of proxy layer for X11.

A lot of people hate on the fact that X is network transparent, but this just shows why it's more important now than ever.

StavrosK3• 15 years ago

It's actually the NoMachine NX client. It's great.

streptomycin• 15 years ago

The new version of NX supports Windows and Mac servers, which don't rely on X11 http://www.nomachine.com/desktop-access.php

drivebyacct2• 15 years ago

Thanks for this. I had no idea that Windows was now a supported server.

This brings me closer to the future of having one simple daemon installed on all my machines and then simply having a hardware-enabled remote client netbook.

sedachv2• 15 years ago

It looks like they just bolted on VNC - access to whole desktop only (no individual apps), grabbing video, sending pixmaps. The X11 portion of NX provides per-application remoting, and much better optimizations.

_b8r03• 15 years ago

Ok, so many years ago we used NX at work because it was a nice protocol that let us run the GUI version of Nessus and a few other tools via Wine on our (then) colo[1]. Anyway, we found that NX was as protectable as Citrix. Several months later we binned it and just VPN'd through the colo. I imagine that unless things have improved from a security standpoint, Canonical's images that they're using for this are going to get owned.

With the exception of one customer with whom we've worked with continuously for 7 years, every single Citrix deployment we've ever looked at has been exploitable to some extent.

[1] - Courtesy of the awesome http://goscomb.net - they're not cheap but damn they're good for UK connectivity.

Ubuntu 11.04 Lets You 'Test Drive' Applications Without Installing

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