A Topic that needs to be discussed on next the QA meeting..

[Andrew Farris]

Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Johann B. Gudmundsson <johannbg <at> hi.is> writes:
>> Jon Stanley wrote:
>>> Your book is not everyone's, nor probably even the majority of
>>> people's.  I for one use sshd on *every* machine that I own (yes, I
>>> even login to my desktop remotely - that's how I IRC).
>>>
>> As I said I needed to know who were the target audience were
>> and I see it's not desktop users thats why Ubuntu succeeded were Fedora 
>> should
>> have long ago ( yes I have had high hopes for a long time )...
> 
> I don't see why sshd would automatically imply "not for desktop users". You 
> just replied to someone who uses it on his desktop (to access his desktop from 
> remote machines, which is not even far-fetched unless you work from home and 
> never travel). As soon as you have at least 2 computers (e.g. one desktop and 
> one laptop, which is fairly common), you'll come to appreciate SSH (and SFTP 
> which comes with it - how else is a desktop user who also owns a laptop going 
> to transfer his/her data between the 2 machines? Through the Internet? How's 
> that good for security?).

Yes, its quite useful for desktop users.  I regularly sync portions of my home 
from several virtual machines, my laptop, and my desktop, all setup with keypair 
identity logins.  However I would expect anyone wanting to do something similar 
to have no problem opening the firewall and turning on the service.  Most 
desktop users don't need ssh open to the outside (maybe on their local network 
sure).  Its very handy to ssh in and reboot a machine on this X has crashed for 
instance.

Perhaps the basic firewall configuration should have local address pinholes but 
not be open routable addresses.  Its something to consider.

-- 
Andrew Farris <lordmorgul at gmail.com> www.lordmorgul.net
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No one now has, and no one will ever again get, the big picture. - Daniel Geer
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