Kubuntu on Painkillers

[jeff_duntemann]

A quick update on my mouth rehab, though it borders on TMI: About two weeks ago I had 30 new crowns installed, after fussing with a mouthful of temps for most of a month, one of which had a bad habit of coming loose while I was doing something innocuous, like chewing a chicken leg. That

Comments

[madtechie2718]

I've been using standard flavour Ubuntu so far - and it gets better each time.

Following your comment, I decided to give Kubuntu a try on a spare machine, but found this warning on the local university mirror for Kubuntu but not Ubuntu:

***
These images are vulnerable to USN-612-1, a very serious flaw in the cryptographic library used to generate encryption keys. It is essential that you apply all security updates after installation before making any use of your system.
***

Any thoughts?

[jeff_duntemann]

From what I see online, the crypto vulnerability applies to all Debian-based distros, which includes all the buntus. Leaving Ubuntu out of the list must have been a misunderstanding.

I would think that would be fixable, but I don't understand enough about SSL internals to know if or how long it might take to fix it.

OpenSSH problem

[rkhalloran]

There was a very recently discovered (May 13) vulnerability in the random number generator used by OpenSSH in Debian-based Linux distros, which includes *buntu. Turns up it generates a smaller range of keys than you'd expect, making a brute-force key attack more likely to succeed. Details at http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-612-1 . Apply the updates in a timely manner and you should be fine.

Jeff,

Check this link on a SuSE-style GRUB menu... http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=208855 . Links at the tail of the message thread for various splash screens. Good luck.

[baron_waste]

Dang, Mr Duntemann, you're turning into a cyborg!

(By the bye, if you ever have the chance to read Martin Caidin's Cyborg, the book upon which “The Six Million Dollar Man” was based, I think you'd be impressed. He did his homework throughout, and what the TV show became wasn't his fault… For example, that whole “beeping telescopic eye” business - no. Col. Squint lost that eye in the wreck, and they weren't God; he'd lost that eye - sorry. What they did, was build a camera into that eyesocket. He could take pictures by pressing on that side of his temple. Meanwhile, the new ribs they gave him were helical-cored polymer, excellent radio antennae… &c.)

[jeff_duntemann]

Actually, apart from losing a few moles and gaining some porcelain teeth, I'm entirely original equipment. I still have my tonsils and appendix, and (as yet) no titanium joints.

I know Caidin mostly from Marooned which I must say I enjoyed, though it does sound a lot like 1965.

If I can ever move myself to write the sequel to The Cunning Blood, it will be about cell-level cyborgs. Most of my problem is that I like most other sciences better than I like biology, and to do the book I will have to learn a lot more biology than I know. It's not a curriculum for the squeamish--and guess what?