| 2014-05-29 16:21:00 |
Sannie Kwakman |
description |
Most corporate environments I've worked at use an authenticating (NTLM) proxy for internet access on their internal network. After tyring out ElementaryOS (Luna) on such a network, I've found that Midori and Geary do not support proxy authentication, making it impossible for these applications to get access to the internet on such a network.
The Linux ecosystem as a whole has different takes on supporting such environments:
- Most CLI tools rely on HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables, requiring the user's username and password to be in there as well (in http format eg http://<username>:<password>@<proxy address) which is not secure. Additionally, this method does not support automatic proxy configuration .pac urls.
- Apt has its own proxy configuration, using a file in apt.conf.d using Acquire::http::Proxy::<proxy address, including authentication).
- Firefox and Chrome use GNOME's configuration but each implement authentication promps and storage of credentials instead of relying on GNOME.
Firefox and Chrome offer the best support in this regard. However I still have to enter proxy authentication credentials for each program instead of just once. Midori and Geary could do better and send the authentication data to GNOME so other applications don't have to ask for it anymore. |
Most corporate environments I've worked at use an authenticating (NTLM) proxy for internet access on their internal network. After tyring out ElementaryOS (Luna) on such a network, I've found that Midori and Geary do not support proxy authentication, making it impossible for these applications to get access to the internet on such a network.
The Linux ecosystem as a whole has different takes on supporting such environments:
- Most CLI tools rely on HTTP_PROXY and HTTPS_PROXY environment variables, requiring the user's username and password to be in there as well (in http format eg http://<username>:<password>@<proxy address) which is not secure. Additionally, this method does not support automatic proxy configuration .pac urls.
- Apt has its own proxy configuration, using a file in apt.conf.d using Acquire::http::Proxy::<proxy address, including authentication).
- Firefox and Chrome use GNOME's configuration but each implement authentication prompts and storage of credentials instead of relying on GNOME.
Firefox and Chrome offer the best support in this regard. However I still have to enter proxy authentication credentials for each program instead of just once. Midori and Geary could do better and send the authentication data to GNOME so other applications don't have to ask for it anymore. |
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