fit-PC sells a box (the Intense PC) that is rebranded as the MintBox 2, which has Linux Mint preinstalled, with the Linux Mint project getting a cut of the profits.
Clement Lefebvre, the honcho at Linux Mint, notes[1] that the firmware has a security vulnerability which needs to be patched. Hilariously, the manufacturer's instructions call out a MS Windows-only tool.
[1] In the comments there, Clem responds to Kim, saying that Linux Mint has the tools available to get the job done. In the comments attached to a clickbait article at BetaNews, it was mentioned that dd (sometimes referred to as Data Dump), an app that comes with pretty much every Linux distro, will also do the task.
[Ed Note: The vast majority of fit-PC's products also come in Windows flavors. They are NOT a Linux only company. - cmn32480]
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PC Running Linux Mint: Use MS-Only Software to Fix It?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @10:19PM (7 children)
This has ALWAYS been a problem.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:43PM
I miss reading those Microsoft help websites where MS techs only give you notebook scripted answers instead of getting to a solution. Q: "My mouse won't work" A: :First run your antivirus, then check for updates, then restart your PC, and if that doesn't fix it reinstall Windows.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday June 12 2017, @12:25AM (1 child)
What, exactly, has "always" been a problem?
-- PC firmware developers releasing a Windows-only patch? Yeah, that's been a consistent problem.
-- PC firmware developers releasing Windows-only patches for computers marketed as being "Linux compatible" or even sold with Linux installed as an option? Yep, that's happened too.
-- PC firmware developers releasing Windows-only patches for computer models specifically marketed ONLY to Linux users AND which contain the name of a Linux distro in their name ("MintBox") AND have a distro logo on the computer itself?
Maybe that last one has happened before, though I haven't heard of it. You have to admit it's a bit of a more egregious issue than the first one, because the company is specifically modifying and marketing these models to Linux users.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @03:22AM
You're tiresome.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @07:57AM (1 child)
Garmin GPS - Windows only for updates.
Canon scanner - Windows only software (slide scanning)
Mac support, sometimes. Linux, sadly, an afterthought.
We are after all, only 2% of the world 'market', but we are the 2% what make it happen and who know stuff. 98% sheep don't make it the right technology.
These box-makers have a Win-centric process, and on the side as a favour, make a box pre-installed with Mint. But when the doggie-doo hits the BIOS fan, they only have one tool in their toolbox. So if 'dd' can be used to re-flash the BIOS, it would be good to see those instructions... from a trusted source. No "hey buddy just run this: sudo rm -rf / nohup &"...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @08:56AM
Yes, and that's a bootable FreeDOS image containing both the BIOS image and the (DOS) tools to write it. The only Windows tool mentioned is one to write the image to the stick. Linux comes with the ability out of the box, so no third-party tool is needed there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @08:22AM
Not always.
When I needed to update the BIOS on my Pentium 4 motherboard, I got a DOS executable. I downloaded a floppy image of OpenDOS, which worked fine for the job.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 12 2017, @08:36PM
Nothing that a 8G USB stick won't fix.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jimtheowl on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:19PM (2 children)
https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?dd(1) [freebsd.org]
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/dd.1.html [man7.org]
That said, it is not unheard of to boot in some other OS to run a manufacturer's configuration utility.
This was very common in the days DOS was still around, and pretty much the only way to configure 3COM NICs and Adaptec SCSI cards before booting the OS of your choice.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday June 12 2017, @07:43AM (1 child)
And still is, except that now it's FreeDOS instead of MS-DOS - as in, for example, the procedure described in TFA; does any manufacturer actually use Windows bios update tools?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Monday June 12 2017, @02:46PM
If I had to implement something of the sort, FreeDOS is likely what I would use as well.
That said, the procedures referred to above seem to call for Win32 Disk Imager, a utility built for Windows using QT 5.2.1 and MinGW 4.8, so the said firmware seems quite accessible.
dd is more direct than the 'Windows' procedure and it would be trivial to hide the procedure under a GUI layer if there was any motivation from the manufacturer of fit-PC to enhance their product for non geeks.
This said, they at least have a linux option.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:21PM (13 children)
Sigh sigh sigh
🤦
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:32PM (4 children)
Mint users are pretty much Windows users, never mind that Mint as a distro is bug-ridden gobshite and I have no idea how it got hyped to the point it did. Still, they need tools that are easy-to-understand if not one-click solutions.
Not fifty-million goddamn options that 99% of people don't even use. You'd think that a bootable USB image of Linux would Just Work nowadays, nope! Still gotta fuck with options when writing the image , then again fuck with boot options to get it to boot. Linux was on a roll for awhile, then started regressing back into the stone-age.
It's a goddamn shame, really.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:48PM (1 child)
Your Mint experience is nothing like mine. I have been using Mint for about 2 years and have never had a problem, with the notable exception of a Bluetooth mouse that stopped working.
I think I started with version 17.0 and have just upgraded every time a new release happened, so I must be on 18.1 now.
Linux Mint does everything I need and never causes me problems. Also Cinnamon is a nice desktop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @12:15AM
+1 positive mint experience.
Mint was my introduction to Linux as a desktop OS.
Coming from Windows, Cinnamon was a very comfortable DTE and matching shortcuts for things like minimising/maximising was nice when doing the boring day to day desktop stuff: browsing the internet, reading email, typing documents. Basically it meant my computer was still a computer while I was relearning how to use it and I didn't have to reboot all the time to get stuff done.
Certainly it has it's flaws and I can't speak to it's current state, since I haven't used it for some time, but I enjoyed it while I was getting to grips with the Linux world.
Now my desktops (home and work) and laptop run Debian with i3 as my window manager of choice. So mint gets credit for one full Linux conversion at least
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 11 2017, @11:57PM
Did you up/downgrade from alcohol to crack cocaine or something? Where did you even get this stupidity? Whatever you're taking, it's been rotting away your brain.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @12:16AM
Clem's response to Kim, linked as tools [linuxmint.com] says
Someone makes it easier than this?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @12:29AM (7 children)
OK. dd is an internal command, not a separate executable file.
So, "app" isn't the ideal word; "command" would have been better.
There's no requirement for the guy who compiled -your- kernel to include it, so there's a possibility that it's not there to be run.
There are a scad of interpretations/expansions of dd.
I picked 1 that is pretty common.
Do you have 1 you like better?
Does that cover all of your eye-rolling or did I miss something?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by hendrikboom on Monday June 12 2017, @02:04AM (2 children)
On my Linux system, dd is an executable file. Specifically, /bin/dd
Or has systemd managed to screw even that up?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @02:58AM
Hmmm, yeah. There that sucker is.
That would seem to strike 1 of the sighs.
(It's still possible to omit it.)
...as well as the assertion of another commenter about its app-ness.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Zyx Abacab on Monday June 12 2017, @09:13AM
If systemd's `rm -r .*` walks up the entire filesystem-hierarchy, you can fully expect systemd's `dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda3` to nuke all your hard disks, flash drives, blank DVDs, network shares, and brain-cells.
That behaviour is just an ordinary UNIX pitfall, no? [github.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday June 12 2017, @07:58AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @08:50AM (2 children)
I agree that "command" would have been a more appropriate word, but for different reasons. As others noted, dd is indeed an executable file.
However in my book an app (or application) is a program which is controlled through its UI (doesn't need to be a GUI; the point is that you first start the program, and then instruct it to do what you want. There may be command line options as well, but they don't cover the complete functionality. In particular, an app is normally not suitable to be used in a script, but perfectly suitable to be started interactively from environments that don't provide the option to easily provide arbitrary arguments at startup (such as the typical desktop environment).
OTOH, a command is controlled completely through its command line. Once you submitted that command, it just does its thing. It may ask some simple questions by default (Continue (Y/N), but that can be prevented using command line options as well. A command is perfectly usable from a script, but generally cannot be used easily from a desktop environment (except of course by either opening a terminal window with shell, or a "run command" dialog.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @09:24PM (1 child)
cannot be used easily from a desktop environment
Your exception actually means that a commandline invoked executable are very easy to use from a desktop environment, with the commandline switches it is in fact often easier than hunting through ever increasing levels of menus with a mouse. This is especially true if you are using something like fish or zsh as your terminal instead of bash/dash because of their smart autocomplete.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday June 12 2017, @09:53PM
*sh are not terminals, but shells. Terminals (or rather, terminal emulators) are xterm, konsole and Gnome-Terminal.
And no, I don't consider running commands from a terminal window as "running from a desktop environment". The terminal runs on the desktop environment. The command runs on the terminal.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @05:31AM (1 child)
It comes with proprietary software out of the box (not limited to firmware) and its repositories don't separate free software from proprietary.
Mint is a mess, don't go there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @08:04AM
A Devuan devotee? Or a Trisquellite puritan? Ah, but maybe an agent of the Ballmer Satanyana cult of closed-source Black Gates of H*ll magic?
I've had nothing but smooth sailing with Mint for many years. I find other distros that I test, lacking.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 12 2017, @08:36AM (1 child)
The only Windows-only tool that is mentioned in the article is the tool Win32DiskImager. I never before even heard of that tool, but yet it is very obvious what it is used for: To make a bootable USB stick from the disk image provided.
Now obviously for a computer marketed specifically for Linux, it would make sense to have the instructions tell how to make a bootable USB stick from an image using Linux tools instead. OTOH, if you can't figure out how to do that (there has to be a ton of tutorials on the net; also I think Mint has a program for it in the desktop menu of the default install), maybe Linux is not for you.
The actual update tool does not run from Windows, but from FreeDOS, booted from the stick.
So no, the manufacturer is not to blame for the tool he provides. The only thing that should be updated is the Wiki page, to tell how to get the image on the stick under Linux.
(Actually, one computer I had had a much nicer interface: You could initiate a BIOS update directly from within the BIOS itself; all you needed was to have the new BIOS image in the main directory of the USB stick.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 13 2017, @06:19PM
yes, all asus and asrock boards that i have used have had this for several years. probably other manufacturers by now too.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday June 13 2017, @06:35AM
I had once to update bios and i had already got rid of waste of gb windows. So I crossed fingers and used freedos, it worked. Of course if it fails you are truly fvkked.
Account abandoned.