Linux discussion

[Guest MONGO]

BTW Linux users never have to defragment, and rarely need to reboot either!

aye but linux is !*!@# to much faff

[Monsta®]

BTW Linux users never have to defragment, and rarely need to reboot either!

pity its not more universal and user friendly oh and you forgot to say it virus free!

EDIT: The following is a reply from Mr Darn, from the split thread...

Actually, its not!

its just the majority of viral writers out there want maximum impact, so write for windows based platforms.

it is MUCH more secure, but not completely virus free.

Edited February 2, 2009 by Mr Darn™
added split responce

[Monsta®]

:ph34r:

Linux is "virus-free" in that there are essentially no viruses for Linux in the wild, although research viruses certainly do exist. It is also "virus-free" for much the same reason as vendors give for not porting closed-source apps to it - the number of permutations is high, so the number of machines a closed-source program will run on (unless libraries are included) is relatively low.

(Vendors don't have the excuse virus-writers have of wanting to keep the binaries small and are quite capable of supplying statically-linked binaries or the shared libraries with a suitable LD_LIBRARY_PATH - and some do.)

There are other reasons, of course. "Normal" user accounts have much more limited access to the rest of the system, so making the corruption of system binaries much harder. Many distributions provide intrusion-detection software for detecting binary changes. Distributions release regular updates, which means a virus will be overwritten in a relatively short timeframe. Mandatory access controls are becoming more popular, limiting what a virus can do even if it did infiltrate a system binary. And so on.

BIOS viruses are OS-independent and so a potentially greater threat. The flash memory is usually unscanned by virus scanners, as well. However, BIOS viruses have had something like ten years to emerge and really haven't been as much of a problem as initially predicted. With the increasing popularity of flashable firmware and "intelligent" devices and daughter cards, you'd expect to see problems there too, but that's so far not happened.

Having said that, because flash content is updated far less often, requires nothing to stay in verified areas of the system, and requires there to be only a temporary exploit, I would expect to see these becoming a problem for Linux users long before true native Linux viruses themselves will be.

pasted from a techy site!

[threegee]

Linux is "virus-free" in that there are essentially no viruses for Linux in the wild, although research viruses certainly do exist. It is also "virus-free" for much the same reason as vendors give for not porting closed-source apps to it - the number of permutations is high, so the number of machines a closed-source program will run on (unless libraries are included) is relatively low.

There's a far simpler reason too. That's that most Linux users are far more computer and security aware and simply don't do things that will compromise their system.

You can get just about everything in source code. So it's all open to peer review - some purists still insist on compiling everything themselves.

I'd also guess that may virus writers are Linux users themselves and don't have any incentive to c**p in their own back yard. Nor is there an "evil empire" attached to Linux that you'd be motivated to mount a "guerilla attack" on. And, you know that if you did, you would be much more readily traced and identified.

I've been impressed recently as to just how portable binaries now are between various Linux distributions. If there is a portability issue you can be pretty confident that someone somewhere has already fixed it.

I'd urge everyone to give say Ubuntu a fair try. You will probably be very pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to install and how useful the bundled software selection is. At worst you will come away with a free glimpse of what's on the other side of the fence, and at best you'll never spend another penny on legitimate software (and the constant buying of the same old rope over and over again).

[threegee]

aye but linux is !*!@# to much faff

Would that be the four hour faff I had re-installing a damaged copy of XP on a machine that had to be returned because of a WiFi module fault. (From the in-the-box discs and hours worth of "hotfixes", bundled applications & driver updates.) Or the twelve minute faff I had installing a bang up-to-date and fully functional copy of Ubuntu on the replacement hardware (including re-partitioning the hard drive)?

[Mr Darn]

i have personally used the knoppix live CD, and was greatly impressed.

not impressed enough to install linux as an OS just yet, but impressed none the less.

the fact they can get an OS to run from a 700mb disk, and have it browse as fast as a windows machine, FROM DISK, is a good thing from my point of view.

once i familierise myself with it further, and i'm convinced it'll do as good a job as windows without too much to learn, i'll be making the change.

[threegee]

i have personally used the knoppix live CD, and was greatly impressed.

That was my first intro to W-I-M Linux too. But the Ubuntu CD is live too. What's more you can install it properly from the live CD without even rebooting. I have a couple of USB sticks I use to install it on other machines for people - faster than using a CD.

The best way to try it out though is Wubi. This creates a virtual file system under Windows, and gives you a dual boot machine. The Linux drive is just a big NTFS file in a directory off the Windows root, and it can be un-installed from the Windows uninstaller. Wubi is on the Ubuntu CD, but if you download it then it will go on the net and download the Ubuntu image itself and install that. Obviously Wubi is a Windows program.

[Monsta®]

i have personally used the knoppix live CD, and was greatly impressed.

not impressed enough to install linux as an OS just yet, but impressed none the less.

the fact they can get an OS to run from a 700mb disk, and have it browse as fast as a windows machine, FROM DISK, is a good thing from my point of view.

once i familierise myself with it further, and i'm convinced it'll do as good a job as windows without too much to learn, i'll be making the change.

prefer ubuntu or debian excellent for mysql

[Mr Darn]

come on guys! this is going way off topic AGAIN!

lets concentrate on sleepys problem in the main thread, and discuss things in the discussions forum eh?

if we keep digressing like this, people will just not ask questions!

[threegee]

prefer ubuntu or debian excellent for mysql

Ubuntu is just a spruced-up Debian. Uses .deb install files in the main.

Can you imagine the M$ reaction to someone taking their OS, bending it to their own preferences, and then giving it away. That's the power of open source, the GNU General Public License, and copyleft!

[Blank]

It's good to see that we can now buy laptops off the shelves with a Linux OS pre-installed and you sometimes save a little bit of money too.

Not long ago Linux was virtually unheard of outside of the programmer circles but I think in time it will steadily gain more market share in the home consumer market as people are exposed to it on the shelves more and especially with all the hype around open source right now.

Speaking of open source, who else thinks it's only a matter of time before Google releases it's own operating system?