A nasty trend...

[Moonchild]

A nasty trend I'm seeing lately with "big player" software vendors: They all start installing "Maintenance services" along with their software:

• Google pioneered with the Google Update service
• Adobe Flash installs a maintenance service for automatic updating (the default choice)
• Firefox installs a maintenance service since V12
• and more...

Why do I see a problem with this?

• Services are often started at boot time and run all the time, even when you don't need them (99% of the time)
• Each miscellaneous service can have security vulnerabilities of its own
• All services are run by svchost.exe which in just about all firewall setups is given full and unrestricted access to the internet (since it's used by Windows Updates, as well). A firewall cannot distinguish which copy of svchost.exe is used for what.

This spells a very dangerous scenario from a security point of view. If a vulnerability is discovered in one of the maintenance services, it will be immediately exploitable on all machines that have these services installed, and can spread like wildfire.
And honestly, for what? just so users don't have to click a UAC dialog that's there for their protection?

My advice: remove these maintenance services. Disable silent installs, no matter how "convenient" it is for users. IMO having 10 potentially vulnerable services running 24/7 is much worse than having 1 piece of software (started when needed) possibly not being up-to-date.

[Night Wing]

I'm just curious since I'm a non technical person. My next door neighbor wanted to try Linux as an alternative to Windows so he loaded up a spare 250 GB internal hard drive Sunday night and put Linux Mint 13 (Cinnamon) on it.

I understand Linux uses repositories for it's programs. Mint 13 was already loaded with Firefox. When he clicked on "About Firefox", the version which came up was Firefox 12, but the interesting thing about the box, there was no updater mini button in it so technically, is there a Maintenance Service program in Firefox to update Firefox in Linux? I was under the impression in Linux there is one button (somewhere) which can update all programs on the computer with the click of that one button. I could be wrong on that.

BTW, I ran across a great deal on a refurbished HP Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit computer (12 GB of memory expandable to 24 GB, i7 940 quad core, 2 TB Western Digital hard drive) on eBay for $650 so I bought it and it's somewhere in transit by FedEx to my home and I should receive it on Tuesday, the 26th. When it arrives, I will have 3 computers and I was thinking of taking my old 2003 computer and reformatting both internal drives in it and putting Linux Mint 13 (Cinnamon) in Drive C and using the second for a backup drive just to play around with Linux. Linux might be the way to go in the future to get around the Maintenance Service stuff all the major big software companies seem to be putting into their software (Firefox, Adobe Flash, etc) for the Windows operating system. Linux is safer than Windows at least that's what I've heard. I did run across an Avast anti virus free version written for Linux last night.

One thing with Linux though, I would....."definitely".....miss not having Pale Moon since PM doesn't run on Linux.

[Moonchild]

The maintenance service is for windows only.

Linux is also not safer than Windows, and it still fails miserably as a desktop O.S. IMNSHO.

EDIT: and it seems your linux mint doesn't even come with a firefox updater at all; which is definitely not a good thing.
In what way would it be a good OS or setup for a non-technical person like yourself, do you think? I'm a technical person - and I wouldn't want Linux as my main workstation O.S., for sure. If I need it for something, a VM is as far as it'll get on my system. It's good for a server O.S. but that's about it.

[dark_moon]

The Firefox version for linux have offcource no update button, cause the internal paket manager update the whole system and all programms, like firefox.

[Moonchild]

And Night Wing had Firefox v12 - while the current version is 13? Then I guess the package updater isn't doing its job right.

[dark_moon]

I have Firefox 13 under my Linux Mint. So Night Wing only need to update firefox in the internal update programm.

[Night Wing]

The maintenance service is for windows only.

Linux is also not safer than Windows, and it still fails miserably as a desktop O.S. IMNSHO.

EDIT: and it seems your linux mint doesn't even come with a firefox updater at all; which is definitely not a good thing.
In what way would it be a good OS or setup for a non-technical person like yourself, do you think

My next door neighbor has Linux Mint 13 on one of his spare 250 GB internal hard drives. I don't have Linux (yet), but with my third desktop computer which is 9 years old and which I really won't use now, putting Linux on it would be a good way for me to play around and learn Linux because I am a non technical person.

In other words, when it comes to a desktop computer, keyboard and mouse, I would rather learn Linux now rather than mess around with Windows 8.

[Moonchild]

Fair enough - we're horribly off-topic by now though, so...

[lyceus]

I founded that the last copy of search and destroy 2 beta 6 like to do that, I wonder how many other apps do their "secret" work without tell me?