Unprotected PCs, Hi-jacking, and You.

oh btw, i just got a new gateway m320x laptop. it's awesome. at least, the color is black. do apple computers have back? no.

 

On the other hand more manufacturers mean more competition for your business. Remember 3DFx? They used to license their voodoo chipsets to 3D Card manufacturers until they bought STB and started selling their own cards. Pretty soon the card manufacturers started using NVIDIA's Riva TNT (or was it TNT2??) chipsets and guess who's not around anymore.

 

Just as a note of interest, until very recently I've run 100% Windows-based PCs in my home, and I haven't had a virus in 9 years (I had a boot-sector virus I got from an infected floppy disk).

I've currently got a desktop machine running XP, a laptop running XP, a server running RedHat 9, and another machine (soon to be dedicated backup) that will be moving from W2K to RedHat 9, and not a lick of trouble. I have a tightly-regulated NAT box, regularly updated anti-virus, and zero problems.

 

I just got a new Dell (running XP) yesterday and already 5 DSO's according to the last spybot run. No more IE for me. I'm going Firefox completely.

 

I only fire up IE to hit the Windows Update site. And that's not really necessary, since you can configure XP to automagically download system updates.

 

i run sus on a win server 2003 for the update. clients do not need to access the ms website as they automatically install the patch from the sus server but to give an approval on the latest patch on the sus server i still have to launch ie.

 

So what browser do you use? Is Firefox a good pick in your opinion? So far so good for me.

 

Firefox all the way.

 

Looks like we've got a clear winner then. Great.

 

Don't got my own church for nothin!

 

You don't mean......... he's in the plot too?

Nah I dont' believe it.

 

Foos is right.

 

To those who say WinXP, Win2k, Win9x, WinServ2003 only get viruses and other malware because MS is the "Big Target", you need to see that there are actually technical, architectural reasons for Windows security problems:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch03s02.html#nt_contrast

This is a detailed, technical analysis of Windows NT (Win2k, WinXP and WinServ2003 are all based on the same NT kernel) architecture. This link also analyses other OS's.

Disclaimer: The link is from Eric Raymond's "The Art of Unix Programming". Eric Raymond is one of the "open source luminaries", who is quite partisan to Linux and other open source software. However, he gives a very fair, balanced, detailed, and technically accurate analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the various OS's.

Some highlights:

So it's not just the "Big Target" phenomenon that causes Windows' security problems, nor is it rhetoric from "Linux zealots" or "mac fanboys". Quite simply, Windows architecture sucks, and is a total house of cards ready to collapse at the slightest breeze.

 

Here is another link to a technical explaination as to why Windows security problems (besides being the "Big Target").

http://www.techuser.net/winsecurity.html

This targets Windows' registry, as well as user priveleges.

And check this one out:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/22/linux_v_windows_security/

 

who cares about the "fact" that lunatic linux freaks claim? they are doing this 24/7 because they know they are still far inferior and need to do whatever it takes to bring down the real giant windows. but let's say they succeed to steal market share from ms somehow, then soon linux zealots are gonna start insulting each other. they will start barking "your linux sucks mine is better and the best!! " and bartering virus until they all get annihilated for their stupidity. by the time japan win the world cup in 2006, they will all become a history and you'll find them in your local museum

trust me

 

Okay...how exactly does Linux work? Is it like Windows and Mac where you have the GUI and just do your thing? i have heard that programming is involved...how does this play out? Also, can't you have XP and Linux on one computer and chose which to use at the start up? I find this to me a lot more useful than the OS X. Also, is Linux much, much better than XP Pro? XP Pro is supposed to be better than the limited Home Edition.

 

Pretty much, you have your choice of Desktop Environments like GNOME or KDE and and you can just do your thing. There's no programming involved but if you want to recompile the kernel you will have to know a few commands. You can have XP and Linux on the same computer but I don't know if linux is much, much better than XP Pro (it depends on who you ask )

 

Linux can be used like Windows or Mac with a GUI environment like KDE or Gnome. It can also be run without a GUI on highend servers or lightweight environments (486 with 16M ram for example). It's the swiss army knife of operating systems, or as Neal Stephenson wrote, like an M1 tank.

If your PC can boot from the cdrom drive, you can try linux without installing. Checkout http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php for a wide range of bootable linux environments that you can try. I'd recommend starting with one that has KDE or Gnome(gui), Firefox (browser)and OpenOffice (office suite) for a good example of a linux desktop alternative to XP or OSX.

I can't say that linux is much, much better than XP for the average user. For one, you can't go into compusa and buy the latest games for it (although some will work with emulation). But, linux does give you an unprecedented amount of freedom. You'll never have your computing environment ********ed up by an M$ update that's designed to give you new "features" and protect their monopoly. Nor will you have to deal with the frustration of virii, spyware, popups, registration, licensing and other annoying ****************.

 

In describing the Linux zealots (and they do exist), you described yourself (only you're an MS zealot). Of course, I know you're trolling, as always, and you're looking for reactions.

I encourage you to read the original link I provided, and look at the guy's detailed technical analysis of all of the major OS's. You might learn something. And you might find that you actually like learning something that isn't from MS marketing FUD.

 

You can have Windows and Linux on the same machine, set up as a dual boot, and it's easy. It is very useful and I've done it myself. You can partition the drive to have separate partitions for the two OS's, and have a third partition for a shared files (using the FAT32 files system, which both OS's can easily read/write). Then when getting email or browsing the internet (and most other stuff, for that matter), boot into Linux. When playing the top modern games, boot into Windows (Windows is great as a game console, but week in a lot of other areas). I've done this configuration myself. It's quite easy.

I encourage you to read the entire chapter in the link I provided, where Eric Raymond analyses all of the major OS's, with all their strenghs and weaknesses. Of course, Eric Raymond's opinion is not the be all to end all (he even irritates me at times), but he really knows his stuff about OS's and programming. He is a good source for this type of information.

But to give you a brief description of how Linux (and Unix, upon which Linux is based) works, here are some key points.

1) The Linux kernel (the piece that interacts with the hardware, handles processes, allocates memory, etc) exists in it's own memory space, in a cacoon (if you will). On top of the kernel are the Shells, which are the interfaces to the outside world (the user), and which speak to the kernel.

2) The GUI desktop environments (like KDE and GNOME) operate on top of the X window system, which in turn operates on top of the kernel, which is protected underneath. The GUI frontend does not operate in the same address space as the kernel, so problems that might occur in the GUI (or separate GUI apps) will not affect the kernel, which will still operate normally.

3) In Unix/Linux, there is no registry, only config files for the various services and utilities that reside in their own separate directories, thus no "DLL Hell", or "registry bloat", or changes made by programs causing critical system level failures.

4) In Unix/Linux, there is the root user, then the separate individual users (Unix was designed from the ground up to by multi user and multi process). The root user has access to everything, including services, system level files, and has read, write, and execute privileges on all files. The root user is roughly the equivelant to the Administrator in Windows.

However, all new users in a Unix/Linux system that are created have their own separate home directories (roughly equivelant to "My Documents" in Windows), and only have read, write, and execute privileges on their own files that they created, or basic program files in the user directory (where most software is installed).

Basic users do not have write or execute privileges to other users' files by default, unless the other users explicitly give them those privileges (through shell commands). Also, basic users do not have write or execute privileges on any system level files.

As is standard convention, any running Unix or Linux system is not logged on or running as root, only as a basic user. If a system administrator needs to change configurations or system level files (or needs to do other admin type of stuff), they use the "su" command in the terminal, then do the operation.

Thus with this type of convention, the Unix and Linux environment is extremely hostile to viruses or any other malware. Any new file (a virus) that gets copied onto Linux is copied as a file under the User who is currently logged on, and only has access to that user's home directory, and has no write or execute privileges on anything else in the system. Thus, because of this simple convention, Unix and Linux systems are virtually immune to viruses. They can receive viruses, and viruses can wreak havoc on a user's home directory, but it can't wreak havoc on the system itself.

By way of comparison, Windows, by default, creates new users with full Amin privileges. So new files (viruses) have full access to system level files and services, as well as the registry. And with the GUI sharing the same address space as the kernel in Windows, and Internet Explore being tied in with kernel, Windows is like having a million dollar masion in the middle of Compton and leaving all the windows and doors open and nothing locked at all times.

Okay, now that I've bored everyone with some major points about Unix/Linux security/architecture vs Windows security/architecture, I encourage anyone here to not take my word for it and look into themselves.

 

Thanks for the info guys!