Because Shiny Things Are Fun - The New New Windows v Linux Thread

Originally Posted by dalek Gentoo isn't that hard either. I switched to Gentoo after just six months of using Linux. It took me two tries during the install but that was because I had to stop at a point that wasn't where I could restart easily so I started over. The install is the hardest part but still not that bad. The rest is pretty easy.

Well, I dunno. I like the package manager a lot though, 'portage'.

oo lupusarcanus since when do you have a laptop? how did you get it ? now you use linux

Originally Posted by silvyus_06 oo lupusarcanus since when do you have a laptop? how did you get it ? now you use linux

I revived an old one I had from 2004 by buying a charger off Amazon. It was very surprising; it only cost me $5 for the charger. The shipping cost more.

I like both, for different reasons. For me, Unix/Linux are my serious 'work' OSs. My laptop runs Ubuntu Studio 11.04 64bit beta from an SD card, and it is fast, stable, and functional. It's an easy OS to back up, patch, and clone. Plus, all the servers I support are some variety of Unix or VMS.

At home, however, I play flight sims, compose/perform music, and do photography. It's terrible at all of these, with an extremely short range of supported hardware and unimpressive results as rewards for the effort it takes to use. Hardware that runs flawlessly under Windows and OSX (even under BSD in some cases) does not work with Linux. You can scream it's the vendor's fault all you like, but the fact of the matter is - that's 99% of what matters. Linux is the OS/2 of the modern OS war. Solid, simple, reliable, and utterly incapable of seriously competing. What's the market share now, 2%?

Your number only applies to the desktop. We have a lot more than that. Check the server market share statistics.

Originally Posted by MBybee I like both, for different reasons. For me, Unix/Linux are my serious 'work' OSs. My laptop runs Ubuntu Studio 11.04 64bit beta from an SD card, and it is fast, stable, and functional. It's an easy OS to back up, patch, and clone. Plus, all the servers I support are some variety of Unix or VMS. At home, however, I play flight sims, compose/perform music, and do photography. It's terrible at all of these, with an extremely short range of supported hardware and unimpressive results as rewards for the effort it takes to use. Hardware that runs flawlessly under Windows and OSX (even under BSD in some cases) does not work with Linux. You can scream it's the vendor's fault all you like, but the fact of the matter is - that's 99% of what matters. Linux is the OS/2 of the modern OS war. Solid, simple, reliable, and utterly incapable of seriously competing. What's the market share now, 2%?

At my home, Slackware and Debian run flawlessly on all my systems (workstation, laptop and server) and the market share of Linux here is 100%. No problems at all, neither with gaming nor with any other task. Of course gaming is simpler on Windows (if you want to run Windows games), but till now I only found two of my games that won't run with wine.

Originally Posted by dalek Gentoo isn't that hard either. I switched to Gentoo after just six months of using Linux. It took me two tries during the install but that was because I had to stop at a point that wasn't where I could restart easily so I started over. The install is the hardest part but still not that bad. The rest is pretty easy.

I've never tried gentoo nor LFS because they require building and compiling everything from the base system to the kernel.
And since I only have one desktop computer and one android tablet, I don't know how long it will take to install gentoo or LSF on the desktop.

I've tried Crux linux 2.7 a while back. The installation started with binaries from the CD. The only thing I had to build was the kernel. It took only 3 hours to compile the kernel. I could live with that versus the unknown time frame of building gentoo or LFS.

Of course, I might do a gentoo install one day once I saved enough money to get a faster PC like an intel i5 or i7

Originally Posted by RedNeck-LQ I've never tried gentoo nor LFS because they require building and compiling everything from the base system to the kernel. And since I only have one desktop computer and one android tablet, I don't know how long it will take to install gentoo or LSF on the desktop. I've tried Crux linux 2.7 a while back. The installation started with binaries from the CD. The only thing I had to build was the kernel. It took only 3 hours to compile the kernel. I could live with that versus the unknown time frame of building gentoo or LFS. Of course, I might do a gentoo install one day once I saved enough to get an intel i5 or i7 PC

You can do like I did the first time. I was using Mandrake and I installed from that. All you need is two hard drives or I guess you could partition just one. I did my install on a separate drive and then just made the Gentoo drive the master drive and the other the slave after Gentoo was installed, old IDE days. Some people install theirs from Knoppix and all sorts of bootable media. I think that is one reason it is best to install Gentoo manually. You also learn a lot about Gentoo and portage while you are at it.

Basically, all you need is something Linux that allows you to chroot into the Gentoo install. If you can chroot, it should work fine. Neat part about installing from another OS, you can surf, read howto's and do your normal things while it is installing.

Originally Posted by lupusarcanus Your number only applies to the desktop. We have a lot more than that. Check the sever market share statistics.

Not sure what the real world stats are on servers, but I have made a living doing Unix/Windows/Big Iron to Linux conversions for over 10 years now. It's simply amazing how companies are adopting it, though the initial conversations tend to be skeptical. Hands down my favorite server OS for general purpose work. BSD is still my favorite for security and router work though

For past some weeks , I have been disscussing Linux and security comes ups .Note this is on windows groups.

The myths going around on the internet.

1.Less than 1% use Linux and 10% use Mac Os X it is not that they are so much better but market share .The Malware makers are going windows where the market shares are.

2.Windows have more security but most people don't use it.

3.Mac OS X security is not that good , windows is better.

4.windows it has more gradual permission level than a ON and OFF like Linux or Mac OS X

5.Malware is growing with Linux and Mac OS X now.

How valid are these claims?

1) Over 50% of web servers run Linux or Unix. Web servers can be much higher value targets than desktops. Yet there is not much malware targeting Linux web servers.

Linux is used less, and those that do use it tend to be more security-conscious anyway, but those facts alone do not explain the lack of Linux malware

2) Should be more specific.

3) Again, the claim needs to be more specific.

4) This is not necessarily a good thing. Unix file permissions are simple and easy to understand, and sufficient in the majority of cases, including all single-user machines. ACLs, as used by Windows (and supported, but rarely used, in Linux) may have more capabilities, but those extra capabilities are only needed in complex server setups; on desktops, they're just more to go wrong.

5)It's growing on Windows faster :-P

They're all coarse characterizations. "better", "more", "good", "gradual", "growing". You can make at least some sense of all of the claims, in the sense that some reasonable inferences from those characterizations are actually true, but not one of them is fit to really reason from. Windows, Linux and Mac all offer much more comprehensive security systems than the ones that come turned on by default (except for Red Hat, which comes with SELinux turned on, it'd be interesting to see them put a year of RHEL support on the line), but having unused security systems doesn't do any of them any good.

If you want to see the simplest demonstration, look at the pwn2own results: when there's shiny stuff on the line, Apple's and Microsoft's browsers on their OS's both get pwnt in seconds. After five years of public humiliation, their users are still one click from disaster.

Nobody broke chrome or firefox this year.

Originally Posted by jthill If you want to see the simplest demonstration, look at the pwn2own results: when there's shiny stuff on the line, Apple's and Microsoft's browsers on their OS's both get pwnt in seconds. After five years of public humiliation, their users are still one click from disaster. Nobody broke chrome or firefox this year.

Are you saying Apple's and Microsoft's browsers are no good?

Over 50% of web servers run Linux or Unix. Web servers can be much higher value targets than desktops. Yet there is not much malware targeting Linux web servers.

Is it not true NSA,CIA ,secret service ,military and defence use Unix ?

2) Should be more specific.

I think they are talking about out of the box windows computer.

3) Again, the claim needs to be more specific.

In most case you need a password to install software that acess system level.Where software that does not acess system level needs no password .

I think they are talking about having a guest account in windows where windows you can set up a account for internet use only with like no permission to do any thing on the computer even open programs or read and write to your files.Almost nothing you can do with guest account with every thing turn off by the admin.

Originally Posted by nec207 2.Windows have more security but most people don't use it.

Regarding this, a question you can ask:

If Windows security is so good, why is there a thriving industry selling expensive fixes for it?

A few weeks ago, I read a really interesting paper publishing the results of "folk models of home computer security". Here is a link. The researchers interviewed several people to gain knowledge of their understanding of computer security in terms of viruses, "hackers", and other security issues. The conclusion is that there are multiple conceptual models that people develop regarding these concepts and that they implement computer security according to these models. As an example, table 3 in the article, which summarizes some of the concepts, says that: the four models regarding viruses are those that: 1-"think that viruses are bad", 2-"think that viruses are buggy software", 3-"think that viruses cause (mostly benign) mischief", 4-"think that viruses are used to support criminal activity." Which view point the user in question possesses determines, or at least influences the actions and measures they take in regards to security. For example, the article concluded that those who think that viruses are applications used by criminals to perform actions like stealing credit cards typically use anti-virus software, while those that think viruses are just bug ridden applications won't.

The summary conclusion was that the average "folk" user makes decisions based upon "common" myths, and that these myths sometimes lead to the correct decision, but most often not. Unfortunately, most of these individuals expressed having no interest in gaining a better understanding of computer security.

At the moment, I can think of little to add to the above in direct reply to the five statements listed, except for number 1: that Linux has less than 1% of the market share. This myth, which I see touted from time to time, is based upon operating system sales both of new machines 99.99% of which come with Windows pre-installed and upgrade sales, versus Mac and Linux sales. The problem with this model is that >99% of the Linux installations are not sold, but downloaded either from a mirror or from a peer to peer network and this renders the calculation invalid as far as determining percentage of the user base.

For example, I currently have six PCs in my home. Of those: four have Windows installed, but it would be a grave mistake to say that we are regular Windows users. Of those, one is about 12 years old and hasn't been booted up in 2-3 years, the other 3 came with Windows (one xp, one vista, one win 7), but all of them have been dual booted and are booted to Windows once every 2-3 months at most and only when necessary. The other two, are used as servers. One didn't come with an OS and the other came with Vista, which was wiped off the HDD. On top of that, both my mother and her brother, both in their 60's, now use Linux as their primary OS. In my immediate family, this leaves only one person out of five (computer users), my 92-yo grandfather, who regularly use Windows.