Benjamin Hodgens

Ideas

I'll occasionally come across a feature in software I use which I feel is either lacking, or is intrusive and irritating. Unfortunately, I neither program quickly nor have a whole lot of time. So, in the interest of actually getting said features one day, I'm sharing them in the hopes that I can infect the thought process of someone actually able to make good on these ideas.

Some of these ideas are simply irritations which I'd like to see "fixed", and take the form of rants. Hopefully some are more than that.

Please, drop me a line if you've come across any of these things in a functional implementation.

Universal File Interface

Unix/Linux Hidden Process Monitor

An Integrated Shell/Terminal for Linux

Tab grouping in the Firefox Web Browser

Tab threading in the Firefox Web Browser

It is one of the most irritating things left on a Linux desktop: the different toolsets - QT, GTK, TK, and their various versions - all have different "file dialog" interfaces. Of particular, I hate the GTK2 interface, and enjoy the QT3 interface, but that's of small matter. The problem is that all these interfaces behave substantially differently.

This is understandable for TK, which has been around since Jesus was writing BASIC and very few newer programs use it, but for QT2 (and 3) and GTK2 - as well as 3rd party monolythic programs like OpenOffice.org - it stands out like a dwarf on a baseketball court. It's problematic because, like the midget on the basketball court, different machinations are necessary in order to accomplish the same thing (ie, save a file).

It's problematic whether the person is primarily a mouse user or keyboard user, because in both cases, the steps required are different from one interface to the other. Even something so simple as the behavior of pressing enter or the space bar is often different, as is the spatial orientation of the various elements.

And, while the file dialog is just one of the components of these toolkits, it's probably the one that people have the most direct interaction with. And it's certainly the most variant.

I don't care so much about my window themes being identical from one library type to the other - though the respective/collective developers seem to have fixed that. This is, and always has been, the biggest frustration of mine on the Linux desktop.

While I am not intimately familiar with the underpinnings of either Xorg or the graphical toolkits, it seems to me that something could be done in order to provide componentized window/desktop manager components, a universal configuration tool, a shared/universal interface - something, anything, to make it so GIMP and Kdevelop (to pick just two) have similar file dialogs.

Unix/Linux Hidden Process Monitor

On Linux or UNIX systems, there isn't much of an overt need for antivirus or spyware detection/removal software. But there is a need for something to help reduce the likelihood of a system infection, and to identify possible problems.

Linux servers are not such a problem: there's a suitable set of tools and methods for detecting and determining whether a system is exploited. Desktop systems are another matter: unlike servers, a user will retrieve unverified data from the Internet of sometimes-dubious quality. This applies mainly to the various web browsers (Firefox, Midori, Konqueror, etc.) but also applies to anything with a web-facing data retrieval interface.

There is currently no good solution for this problem, as far as I know. In fact, I'm unaware of any solution to speak of.

The problem is complex, but for all intents and purposes it seems the problem can be broken down into two basic ways to 'monitor' the system for hostile code:

A resident scanner which will intercept system calls

There are two known approaches to a problem like this: an active, resident scanning tool which inspects all running code for an exploit,