Hard Drives

[Yamaneko]

Supposedly Limited Accounts can't install all kinds of 32-bit programs, and no 16-bit programs.

[Killy]

*must... resist... urge... to recommend... Linux...*

Go ahead, id like to know what kind of features Linux offers for these things.

[crono_logical]

Linux is designed to be multiuser from the start, I believe. The sort of thing you're trying to do with file permissions would be trivial to do in linux. And users wouldn't need to install anything to make them run, most average user programs that they can compile themselves should run from within their home folders without being installed system-wide, so they wouldn't need admin priviledges at all.

[Dr Unne]

It would be somewhat difficult (or at least fairly insane) to set up Linux to run everyone with admin powers. In Linux exactly one user has admin power by default (called root) and you never, ever, ever use root except to do system administration. A user has access to his own home folder, and that's it, period. (There are a few exceptions, but ignore them.) A user can install programs locally, and they exist only for him. A user can wreak havoc in his home directory and none of it ever spills over to affect any other user or the system itself. All files have permissions; it's mandatory, files are created with a default set of permissions and they can then be changed. It's trivial to deny all other users to have permission to look at your files. (Except root, who can do anything.)

It's trivial to deny users the ability to mount (i.e. access) certain partitions (or all partitions) in Linux. But if a user has physical access to a hard drive, it's very difficult to completely deny them access. If they boot from a CD for example, they can do almost anything they want to your system. Linux however has the capability to encrypt entire partitions, so that even with physical access to the drive, no one can ever access your data without a password (they could probably still delete the partition though).