Microsoft Kill Switch? - Can Someone EVER create a FREE OS and make it as popular? (1 Viewer)

[JeremyErwin]

But strangely, IIS remains a target despite the growing popularity of Apache.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

and if you keep making stupid assumptions, maybe the moon won't crash into the earth tomorrow. hasn't happened yet.

we both know i was talking about technologically inept people using linux, since you mentioned complaints from average joes when using linux. unless my parents are joking when they say they need help navigating around the dvd to get to the movie, i'm confident with my argument.

CJ

 

[Ken Chan]

There are very many badly named versions of Java, but at the moment, there's hardly a 2 in the bunch. More importantly, there are new versions of almost everything all the time -- that's that M.O. for the software biz. "so messed up" is vague, but not the reason for Java's rapid evolution.

 

[Bryan X]

Ken,

You are right that two OSes probably aren't equally hackable. Any OS created by programmers will be able to be hacked by programmers. We can argue about which is 'more' secure, but in the end what does it matter? More secure, less secure, the bottom line is none of them are secure. Hackers will adapt and go after the one that gives them the biggest audience. That's my point.

I believe that the hackers are always going to be one (or more) steps ahead of the OS developers. Perhaps I give the hackers too much credit, but I haven't seen a product yet that couldn't be hacked.

Linux doesn't get much attention from hackers now. Give it time and we'll see what happens. I tend to think that if Linux's popularity grew to what Windows is now, we'd see the hackers attention turn to Linux. Do you really think that if Linux held 90% of the desktop market that we'd be living in a world nearly free of viruses? Do you really think hackers couldn't successfully write viruses for Linux?

 

[Jeff Jacobson]

They make joysticks for computers, too.

 

[Bryan X]

Although I've migrated away from PC games towards consoles for other reasons, I always loved playing games on the PC with the keyboard/mouse combo.

 

[JeremyErwin]

I think you give the hackers too little credit. Real hackers write well designed operating systems and fix bugs promptly. Script kiddies search for existing exploits that some corporate entity has been sitting on for weeks or months.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Aaannd we've successfully turned a friendly discussion about alternate OS's into a rabid argument about relative OS security again. Two thumbs up!

 

[JeremyErwin]

Doesn't Symantec force users to subscribe?
Apple releases point upgrades on an annual basis-- $129 per year.
Most of the commercial support schemes for linux are also annual.

It kind of falls into "monopoly abuse," though.

 

[Ken Chan]

They're not really point upgrades; more like going from Windows 95 to 98. Apple wants to maintain the "OS X" branding. And while it was about annual from 10.1 to 10.3, it was 18 months to 10.4, and will be about two years to 10.5. And they're not mandatory; people skip versions and you still get free/automatic security updates for previous versions for a while.

 

[JeremyErwin]

every programmer has his own ideas about what version numbering systems mean.
I'm partial to Knuth's.

 

[Greg*go]

That link is from 2003. when did sp2 come out? I remember an episode of the Screen Savers where Kevin Rose hooked up a Windows box with SP2 installed ONLY. No antivirus software, and only the XP firewall. He then provided the IP address for the PC during the show, and dared anyone to try to hack into the computer. I think they even had a reward for the first person to successfully do it. I believe on the 2nd day, the ISP shut the challenge down because they were getting a crazy number of attacks on their server, but during the time it was running, not one person was able to hack into the computer.

I'm just a regular guy, no programming or networking experience, so maybe I"m completely wrong on this... But I've always been told the #1 step to a secure computer is old fashioned human intelligence. If you're smart enough not to open emails, or click on links in IMs from people you don't know, the regular user is already avoiding a huge % possible attacks. Keeping any of your systems (XP or some version of Linux) updated, would be the 2nd huge step. After that, it's small incremental steps, no?

I don't like the whole "mac & linux are 5% of the market, so why don't they have 5% of the virii?" I've always thought it doesn't work because 99.9% of the computer novices use Windows. Of course your parents are an exception, you can admit that they are not the standard Linux user, right? What % of Linux users would you clasify as "computer novice?"

Oddly enough, doing a search on the web didn't provide any articles I could find from 2006. But I think this 2004 article gves the best answer to the debate... No one wins out right.

 

[Bryan X]

I agree on all points, Greg

I've never had a problem with a virus or any other attack and I think it's precisely because of what you outlined above. In fact up until a year or so ago I didn't even have an anti-virus program running in real time. I would just periodically update and run the virus scan. Never a single problem. And I was running Windows with always-on broadband. Does this mean Windows is completely secure? Of course not. But I think it does highlight that many problems people encounter are probably of their own negligence -- not all of course, but a great deal.

No OS is completely secure. Is one marginally more secure than another? Probably. But so what? The point being, none of them are secure enough to withstand being installed on millions of computer novice's desktops.

 

[JeremyErwin]

openbsd comes close.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

well i dont know that linux should have nearly linear market share vs virii, but i know that even if it had a 1% market share and 500 viruses (both extremely unreasonable numbers), it wouldn't be as high as windows' virus/%market share ratio. i'm not certain that number is the most important of them all, but i hope we can agree that it means something.

and yes, my parents aren't the standard linux user, but i am proving a point that linux CAN be used on an average joe's pc. it's not inherently harder or easier than windows (although they declined to go back to windows after i offered to switch their comp back). there are lots of people trying out distros like suse and ubuntu that are novices, not everyone is an expert.

i had one really nasty virus with windows once, but other than that, i've never had a problem. i always kept my spyware scanners up to date, but never ran a virus scanner. every one i tried couldnt pick up my nasty virus infection, anyway. i'm not knocking windows, i still run it in a virtual machine because of a few windows only apps i need. but i'd never connect a windows machine to the internet without it being protected to the nines with third party malware protection software. whether i need to pay for the third party software or not, i don't even need any additional software in linux to be protected.

CJ

 

[Greg*go]

Ah yes, excellent point. Here lies the original posters concerns. I currently use Windows, but I'm also considering switching over because of this.

I do have a question regarding this. I've read there are ways to run Windows programs on various Linux distros. When installing the Windows program on Linux, do you have to specifically tell Linux to treat it a certain way? I'm hoping the answer is yes.

 

[Ken Chan]

I don't know any good sources for counting novices, but given that Macs are specifically targeted toward people that want their computers to "Just Work", and they have between 2% of "computers" and recently 12% of notebooks, I would guess the number of non-Windows novices is that miniscule. I could easily see you being off by "2000%" (i.e. 98%) if not more

 

[JeremyErwin]

weak numbers to justify weak arguments. The fact is that it's perfectly possible to design an operating system around security.

 

[RichP]

Holy jumpin monkeys, the amount of ignorance in this thread is astonishing. It is entertaining though, watching people argue topics on which they know little to nothing about. So carry on, don't mind me.

 

[Greg*go]