why pay M$

the boss wrote: secondly, throught out my exposure to windows, i have learnt that if locked down properly, no amount of virus will make way into your system. Unfortunately, for the sake of userfriendliness, lots of windows stuff has been left open...never in my life.. a worm like sobig or blaster had affected my computer..   on the flip side, configuring security really needs a lot of skill and know how. This is harder compared to buying the usual linux BS of "it is secure because it has less viruses"... it only has less viruses because virus seekers are looking for most damage in least time. Making windows with all those holes and widespread use, a perfect target..

I agree with the boss here. I think that with enough "know how" windows can be made very secured. I too have never been infected by a Virus on my windows system because I have the right security in place.

I have also secured many of my clients' windows machines and they too have never been infected with a virus.

I think there's a place in the world for both types of systems.
But if you do a full install of either, you've got out-of-the-box security issues. Both types need to be locked down.

Unix has always been easier to do partial installs than windows. You can install just what you need with fewer dependencies upon other OS components that could provide attack vectors. Windows has always been so interwoven that installing just the sevices you need to perform one specific function (e.g. web server) has been impossible in the past.

On the bright side though, MS finally wised up about that and has started relesing functional configurations of their server OS's - e.g. just the stuff to run iis, or just the stuff to run MS SQL.

Their client platforms like XP are still a hodge-podge of services in an attempt to be all things to all people (ever try to get ris of MS Messenger?).
The security approaches to Windows client machines have been back-assward... instead of being able to reduce exposure by being able to remove services you don't need or don't want, the only viable security solutions are to wrap it around the OS rather than completely within it.

So you see everyone running firewall software, AV software, Spyware Software, etc. around the OS - kind of like trying to wrap a size 32 belt around a size 40 belly - some stuff just spills over. Better to loose weight.

I've been playing with Ubuntu and like it. Not sure yet if I'll replace a bsd system with it as I want to get more familiar with it before I "fix" something that works - lol.

If the rumors about google picking it up as Goobunto and distributing it as a desktop alternative to MS turn out to be true, we could be moving into a different computing universe.

Mart wrote: I had to use linux recently as I had to work on a project that was being developed on a linux platform, so I installed ubuntu, 2 weeks later I decided to completely remove windows from my main desktop, I was really impressed. My UI with KDE + X Composite manager even tops vista, I've got drop shadows, translucency, fading and it doesn't even use much CPU. (http://www.opensourceproject.net/snapshot1.jpg) Ubuntu is just 1 CD, and if you go onto their site you can ask to be mailed a CD for free - you don't even have to pay postage, it also installs everything you need, open office, FF, gAIM etc.

I remember you asking me about Linux a while ago but you never said you started using it completely.

I now use PHP + lighttpd (alternative to apache) for my web development so I have less dependency on Windows and IIS.


I am honured to be in the screenshot but neither GAIM or Kopete shows my PSM allow you to view my MSN space. This is mainly because they are using the older MSN protocol


Edited by huwnet - 04 February 2006 at 10:59pm