RANT: Run as Normal User
AKA “Run as non-admin”. We call it “RANU” around here, or sometimes “why would you do that?”
I have a Linux background. There it seemed obvious to run as 'jbazuzi' sometimes and 'root' other times. But making it work in Windows is just hard.
I don't mind that I can't install most software as a normal user. That's something we'll get to in time. Right now I'm just annoyed that I can't run most apps without being an admin.
I used to play a lot of Everquest. Great game, terrible devs. They save your player-specific and character-specific data in the installation directory (%ProgramFiles%\Sony\Everquest). In the early days it was all in custom binary files, later they moved to text files. They've never heard of %APPDATA%, %HOME%, and the registry? You need to have write access to the application install directory.
I'd like to tell Sony to get on the ball with EQ, and make it work for normal users. It runs in a home environment, often without a firewall or an network guru. It attracts non-techno-geeks so, the audience is particularly susceptible to scams & hoaxes. (Even the scammers get scammed!) Microsoft & Sony need to do our parts to give these users a safe, secure environment.
I bet you run as administrator. I do it, too. I tried hard to run as normal user, on both my development & email machines. It was a big hassle, go figure! Every time I ran into a problem with a tool or VS component, I'd tell the owner. They'd look at me funny & tell me “too bad”.
You really want me to run as normal user, because that'll give you the best chance of a VS that works well as normal user.
Your users really want you to run as normal user, for the same reason.
OK, out of breath, time to take a break from the rant.
