WannaCry ransomware

[WildWestDesigns]

I've been hoping to switch my shop ovee 100% Linux after having to deal with a very ****ty (ongoing win10 experience). I've made the switch at home and am happy enough, even more than 50% of my steam games at home run under linux. I have dual boot win7/ubuntu at work, but because I don't have a reasonable replacement for adobe illustrator, I can't fully switch. I've gotten Ai to "work" under wine, but it is painfully slow compared to native win7. And I'm on a recently built quad-core system with 8Gb of RAM, not like I'm on some ancient box. It seems that I could run the plotters under ubuntu, and am looking forward to switching some of the machines, expecially after having win10 decide in the middle of the work day to perform a 3 hour update

If any of you are on Linux and manage to do print production grade CMYK artwork and have software suggestions, please, let me know what you use.

They way I have it is all Windows apps are run within VirtualBox. WINE still isn't up to snuff for production work. Not unless you have really legacy programs to run (sometimes it seems we are talking 9x era programs).

I would pass any machine into the VM. I would also isolate the VM from any direct outside network connection. Use something like "Shared Folders" (VBox term) to get files in and out. This would also preclude the need for Win 10 updating as well. Now, I would suggest something to scan files before they get into the VM that is on the Linux side of things, but sandbox the VM as much as you can.

I do prefer VMs over dual booting, especially with dual booting between Linux and Windows. It has it's cons, but the pros outweigh the cons in my mind. I run everything from Win 98 to 8.1 (sans XP, I hated that OS with a passion, even when it was new). Sometimes I'll have as many as 4 OS going at one time running different programs.

There is (or at least was, I do think I still have the palette) a pantone palette for Inkscape. You also have a plugin for Inkscape called InkCut. It works decently with my Roland plotters. Inkscape has made improvements, but to me, it still isn't a direct replacement to Ai (but I think if started off learning Inkscape, may not have the same issue(s), but that just wasn't the case).

Linux has squat for digitizing software though, they almost always seem to be in Alpha, so I'll probably always have to run a VM (they also all use dongles and since they use that ms reserved memory space, WINE doesn't read that too well, so it never makes it past the point of plugging in the dongle to complete the installation).

While I do use an Ubuntu derivative (Zorin), I've really been thinking about going with CentOS, mainly due to the 10 yr EOL cycle versus the 5 yr EOL for all other LTSs out there. Only down side is I don't like having to install the Nvidia driver from CLI (learned that from my time with Fedora (EOL of every 13 months) and I would have to reinstall it every time there was a new kernel update). Just a pain.

 

[mjkjr]

They way I have it is all Windows apps are run within VirtualBox. WINE still isn't up to snuff for production work. Not unless you have really legacy programs to run (sometimes it seems we are talking 9x era programs).

I would pass any machine into the VM. I would also isolate the VM from any direct outside network connection. Use something like "Shared Folders" (VBox term) to get files in and out. This would also preclude the need for Win 10 updating as well. Now, I would suggest something to scan files before they get into the VM that is on the Linux side of things, but sandbox the VM as much as you can.

I do prefer VMs over dual booting, especially with dual booting between Linux and Windows. It has it's cons, but the pros outweigh the cons in my mind. I run everything from Win 98 to 8.1 (sans XP, I hated that OS with a passion, even when it was new). Sometimes I'll have as many as 4 OS going at one time running different programs.

There is (or at least was, I do think I still have the palette) a pantone palette for Inkscape. You also have a plugin for Inkscape called InkCut. It works decently with my Roland plotters. Inkscape has made improvements, but to me, it still isn't a direct replacement to Ai (but I think if started off learning Inkscape, may not have the same issue(s), but that just wasn't the case).

Linux has squat for digitizing software though, they almost always seem to be in Alpha, so I'll probably always have to run a VM (they also all use dongles and since they use that ms reserved memory space, WINE doesn't read that too well, so it never makes it past the point of plugging in the dongle to complete the installation).

While I do use an Ubuntu derivative (Zorin), I've really been thinking about going with CentOS, mainly due to the 10 yr EOL cycle versus the 5 yr EOL for all other LTSs out there. Only down side is I don't like having to install the Nvidia driver from CLI (learned that from my time with Fedora (EOL of every 13 months) and I would have to reinstall it every time there was a new kernel update). Just a pain.

Thanks for the info! I've never used VirtualBox before as I am still a linux newb, I'm going to try this out, though I think I've heard of it before, I'm going to try it out. I had my POS Dell win10 machine freeze on me and scrap a bunch of vinyl mid-print again this week and I've had about enough of that.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Thanks for the info! I've never used VirtualBox before as I am still a linux newb, I'm going to try this out, though I think I've heard of it before, I'm going to try it out. I had my POS Dell win10 machine freeze on me and scrap a bunch of vinyl mid-print again this week and I've had about enough of that.

VirtualBox is probably the best overall VM program for Linux that is partially open sourced (Guest Additions is only available as a binary package, the main program is open sourced) and also free. Both of which are not required for Linux programs (Autodesk Maya has native Linux version and it is neither free or open source).

There are other VM programs out there, some really good, but come at a price (VMware) and some are just made to get people easily started with VMs (Gnome Boxes). But, VirtualBox is the best open source one out there in my mind.

 

[Bly]

Or you could just keep Windows updated.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Or you could just keep Windows updated.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple with Windows.

I fully agree with keeping updated and current systems, but Windows is perhaps the worst when it comes to updates based on my experience. I have far less "breakage" with updates with Linux that I do with Windows. Even with the bleeding edge distros like Fedora (which Windows is more bleeding edge then it used to be since they withdrew the easy way to disable auto updates, now it's pretty much a registry edit to stop that).

My dad has a horrible experience with Win 10 Enterprise (through his work) and he does not have the niche software that a lot of us have and he is getting alerts quite frequently of software not being compatible and on a few occasions Windows having removed said software (that is really no bueno in my book) without user input.

Updates in of themselves, lend to a certain degree of instability, that's why it's always best to not have production computers connected online. Updates tend to break things. And really, that is not an unrealistic thing to think would be a problem with Windows computers. Think of all the hardware/software combos that run Windows computers versus Macs. Even Mac has had some issues with updates along the way and I have far less sympathy for them then I do Windows.