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What Windows7 could mean for Linux

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Linux
Microsoft

I’ve had people using Windows 7 for about three months now, and everything about it so far seems to confirm my first impression that it’s a lot better than Vista: effectively reprising the consolidation and debugging Windows 98 offered over 95.

Once you get past the sheer shock of using a Microsoft OS that doesn’t fail daily, however, you start to fret about the things that aren’t there: as a Mac/Solaris user, for example, I find the absence of multi-screen capabilities and the relative inflexibility of working panes and icons extremely frustrating. Still it is usable; and that’s a long step forward - at least until you get to development work.

Then the frustrations set in: Visual Studio is very slick, but very limited. Specifically, it’s great if your application is going to use a super-computer desktop as a graphics terminal but pretty much counter-productive if you want to sidestep client-server and produce genuinely integrated multi-host applications.

So why?




Windows is too stressful for me

I can't run Windows anymore because it is too stressful worrying about whether I'm going to get hacked or get a virus or will my computer get infected by malware just broswing the internet.

re: Windows

Hard to tell if you're truly inept, or just posting to spread FUD.

My small biophysics lab (around 25 users) has run WinXP as our desktop OS since it came out in 2002, and NOT ONCE has it been hacked or infected or BSOD or whatever other horror stories people like to spread around.

All the users have FULL ADMIN rights, and do the normal stupid user tricks that most users do (surf iffy websites, open personal email, etc etc).

The very Rocket Science-esque method we use for such magic? A decent Anti-Virus (which for us is the paid network version of AVG), a good Anti-Malware (we use the free Windows Defender), and the real trick - remove IE and OE and use Firefox (with Adblock Plus and Noscript) and Thunderbird. That plus we sit the whole LAN behind a rock-solid firewall (used to be IPCOP, then we needed Dual WAN capability so now it's PFSENSE - both open source projects).

That's it - no big deal, no real additional work (once installed - it's all automatic), no magic, and NO PROBLEMS.

So it always baffles me when people start spouting about how "hard" it is to make windows run safe and secure.

Bull...

I just had a friend that was running a fully updated Norton 2010 and caught a virus. Don't tell me there are "NO PROBLEMS". Years ago, when running Windows 98SE, something similar happened to me. Norton reported I had the virus after it was too late. The infection had alread done its damage and was unrecoverable. Running internet security software isn't aways safe. It works most of the time, but the one time it doesn't, you're screwed.

re: Bull

So because the AV app you're running sucks, that's the OS's problem?

If so, how is Linux immune to that?

The "howto" for Linux viruses is pretty much well known, when they will appear in the wild is mostly up to market share. Even Mac's (with 5-8 times the market share of Linux) rarely see any widespread viruses. Not because they don't exist, and not because they don't work - but simple because there is a HUGELY bigger target in Windows 90%+ market share.

The bigger threat to Linux is fanboyitis. I could probably infect thousands of Unoobtu boxes with a web page, a download and simple social engineering.

Since Linux powers the

Since Linux powers the majority of the internet, itself, you don't think it comes under attack? You think no one bothers to try to compromise it? You truly are naive...

I've got similar stories with friends with McAfee, as well. It doesn't matter which brand you use. Someone has to catch the virus before those firms know about them and try to stop them. Sometimes it gets to be you, when you're unlucky.

It happens.

vonskippy wrote:
Hard to tell if you're truly inept, or just posting to spread FUD.

My small biophysics lab (around 25 users) has run WinXP as our desktop OS since it came out in 2002, and NOT ONCE has it been hacked or infected or BSOD or whatever other horror stories people like to spread around.

So it always baffles me when people start spouting about how "hard" it is to make windows run safe and secure.

Just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. One such example was installing Windows XP for a client and it got infected before I could download the updates from Microsoft! Remote protocol flaw in the OS!

Don't bother

vonskippy is the resident contrarian here. If you told him water was wet, he'd drown while claiming he was dry.

You lose your credibility...

...when you write things like "Once you get past the sheer shock of using a Microsoft OS that doesn’t fail daily...", which is obviously bullshit. Windows has been very stable from Windows 2000 onwards.

As far as Windows being susceptible to virus attacks goes, you've got to put it behind a firewall (a router that does NAT works nicely) before connecting it to the Internet. Add anti-virus and a software-based firewall, use a browser besides IE, and you've eliminated most of the risk.

My brother got infected with the Sasser worm while running Win2K and connecting to the Internet via a modem. So it can happen. But guess what? He didn't have anti-virus or a software firewall going.

poodles wrote:
I can't run Windows anymore because it is too stressful worrying about whether I'm going to get hacked or get a virus or will my computer get infected by malware just broswing the internet.

There's therapy available for that. (And probably for excessive use of hyperbole, too!)

So, the crux of this article by Mr. "Murphy" was:

Quote:
So now [Microsoft] wants to sell cloud computing and applications rentals but doesn’t have the OS foundation on which the development of these products has to rest - and that’s going to force Microsoft into a build or buy decision.

WTF is he talking about? I don't understand his point.

Another troll...

atang1 wrote:
Since Norton tested my floppy and failed many floppies which were perfect, I never use Norton products. They made you believe their software did great, but they deliberately made your floppies fail a certain percentage.

McAfee has only old virus solutions. Can not solve problems of hardware failure such as electrical arc from power switch during shut down, that leaves a strong magnetic signal on your hdd disk.

So, you're saying the two most dominant security products on the Windows side are complete garbage? Funny that PCMagazine doesn't agree with you.

Quote:
Windows work fine autoupdated without Norton or McAfee software.

Buahahahahaha! Yeah right. You go ahead and run your system that way. I never will.

Quote:
Tuxmachines.org family has family feuds, and thus can not grow user registrations. Please leave your crude remarks home, not on Tuxmachines.org space.

So says you? Why don't you leave YOUR crude (and ridiculous) remarks home.

Same ole Same

http://news.softpedia.com

XP can be made safe

vonskippy is right about one thing, you can make Windows XP reasonably safe to use--school districts do it all the time.

Of course, school districts have somewhat draconian web browsing filters, and also have network versions of antivirus and antimalware programs running on their servers, as well as a strong firewall in place.

My school district (I just retired after 34 years of teaching computer science and mathematics) runs XP clients for 1 high school, 2 middle schools, and 7 elementary schools. It works, and smoothly too.

That being said, Vista and Win 7 are too bloated to run on 85% of our district hardware. Most school districts won't be "upgrading" to Vista or Win 7, for student workstations--way too expensive in terms of hardware.

Windows 7 is just Vista with the latest service pack, some slightly better memory and power management, and a little extra eye candy. It will be a modest success for Microsoft. I doubt it will degrade GNU/Linux's slowly increasing percentage on the world's desktops.

As a longtime desktop user

As a longtime desktop user of Windows, I don't think you can eliminate all the risks; there are simply too many methods of attack. But you can eliminate most of them. And it's not rocket science. (I'll leave it up to the IT professionals here to talk about scenarios in business/school environments with multiple installations.)

For an interesting take on security, look at this interview with security expert Joanna Rutkowska. It's mostly about hard-core kernel-level tech, but on page 6 of the interview, she says at home she uses several virtual machines, each with varying levels of security, to host web browsers depending on the task at hand (e.g. one for general web browsing; another for online shopping; another for online banking). She also says that there's no consumer antivirus product that does much of any good protecting today's monolithic kernels so she doesn't bother with using one on her personal computer (a Mac).

Anyway, does anyone knows what the author of the original article is talking about when he says he doesn't think Win7 is a good enough development platform for..."development work"?

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