Linux...Whats the big deal???

[The Green Bean]

I was wondering whts so great about linux, and is it any point goin ther from windows for a home user???

 

[RedFox1]

I'd surmise that the average home user, who uses a word processor and surfs the web, could very easily get all the software they need for free using linux. (There are several distros out now which will keep the scary command line under wraps.) Probably the most tangible benefit would be in the cost of the PC they buy.

-Russ

 

[thornc]

Or in the ammount of virus, worms and such that they are likely to catch

 

[firewall]

Linux is an open source software and this results in constant development of it. I haven't used it yet though but some of my friends who have used it consider it to be a very good and mind you, welcome product against m$'s dominance in the os software market.

 

[firewall]

I will sure get it when I format my pc next time to try it out.

 

[phillyTIM]

I'd suggest trying Red Hat, Mandrake or SUSE, the latest versions.

Should be a very simple installation and setup for you!

 

[NEVERwinter]

yea, unless you;'re a very heavy software user... because some applications are not available in Linux

 

[xSauronx]

im trying it, and hope to eventually ust it exclusively for a few reasons:

it doesnt have to look like windows...which is rather bland for the most part
its free, or damned close to it.
its not produced by one company who uses their power as a monopoly to manipulate others into doing what they want done
its use isnt goverend by a very restrictive EULA stating when, where, how often and to what extent you can install it
the source is open, so people who have a mind to can manipulate it or have a look at it to know how it works

theres only a couple things keeping me from using it fully right now:

gaming support (love games, must have games). its getting better, and more and more games have native linux clients, and winex (which i have yet to get) supports more and more games. enough that im very tempted to get it and try it out.

usability. mandrake and other distros are handling this rather well; certainly to a point where it would be easy to build a cheap pc for a relative, install mandrake, know everything works and let them at it

software...installation! gah. sometimes getting software or drivers to work is such a pain in the ass that i stop mesing with it and boot into windows; where i can download ONE file, click it, hit next a couple times and voila! a new program is installed and works. ill be trying gentoo this weekend and see if i like the way stuff works in portage, and maybe debian eventually to see how i like apt-get. been using mandrake 9.1; id download a program, and have to go into a readme and do this and that...oh wait, lets login as root first, ok now....and then it still doesnt work quite proper. yes, im new to this, yes i know it takes readmes and howtos...which is why i dont like it sometimes.

 

[Twista]

**nothing** imho!

/end rant (imo not yours now shh)

 

[drag]

It's just different

Windows costs money, Linux you can pay for it or not.

Unless you only use a desktop enviroment like KDE or GNOME that sheilds you from the complexities, Linux does not make any assumptions about your level of compentancy. It doesn't prompt you if you realy want to remove files (unless is set up specificly to ask, like they do in Redhat) for example. You can remove your entire directory system with 7 keystrokes if you want.

Infinetly customizable. Since it doesn't make assumptions you can do what you want with it. There is no limit to performance of the machine, there is no limit to amount of clients or the amount of services you can run from it.

You can give it away, hack it, break it, build it up, change it, redistribute it, etc etc Which is all illegal under Windows.

And a whole host of technical details and such that may or may not matter to a home user.

Some examples.

It's portable and scalable, It can run on a 486, people have phones that run linux, they've made wristwatches that run linux. You can run it on 1970's IBM mainframes and 32-way high end Sun servers. They have clusters (NOT the same type of clusters that Windows advanced database servers can run on, although linux can do that too) that are amoung the most powerfull computers in existance. Currently a linux cluster is the #3 most powerfull computer in the world. Only ASCII Q in Los Alamos and the NEC Earth Simulator in japan are more powerfull. Plus there are more super-clusters being built that will take out the current Linux champion.

Basicly its a OS created by geeks for geeks. It's especially advantagous to use it if you are like the traditional PC enthusiest, it is only limited by the knowledge of it's user. You can, if you know what your doing, have computers in your basement or living room that are as capable or versitile as anything you can find anywere in corporate America. Hell there are probably quite a few people that have T1's or T3's going into their basement and make a good living on the side hosting websites or being local ISP's. Linux makes this easier and relatively inexpensive compared to other OSes.


And if that is something you don't realy give a damn about, think about it this way. Instead of giving MS another couple hundred dollars or so for it's next generation of crappy OSes, you can instead spend that money on a better/bigger monitor or a faster CPU.

And just as long as you keep your OS up to date you won't have to worry about viruses or worms.

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: thornc
Or in the ammount of virus, worms and such that they are likely to catch

As the saturation of Linux in the home increases so will the incident rate of virus and worm infections in linux machines. Wait and see.

 

[Spyro]

Originally posted by: Megatomic

Originally posted by: thornc
Or in the ammount of virus, worms and such that they are likely to catch

As the saturation of Linux in the home increases so will the incident rate of virus and worm infections in linux machines. Wait and see.

So what? As drag said, as long as you keep your OS up to date you won't have to worry about viruses or worms. Besides, unless you're logged in as the superuser (or a user with comparable access permisions) a virus will only be able to touch the files in your home directory, which (if you're smart) should be backed up.One more thing of note is that it won't be able to format your hard drive or anything else like, unless you're logged in as the superuser browsing the internet in which case you're simply getting what you asked for.

 

[thereaderrabbit]

$$$

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: Spyro

Originally posted by: Megatomic

Originally posted by: thornc
Or in the ammount of virus, worms and such that they are likely to catch

As the saturation of Linux in the home increases so will the incident rate of virus and worm infections in linux machines. Wait and see.

So what? As drag said, as long as you keep your OS up to date you won't have to worry about viruses or worms. Besides, unless you're logged in as the superuser (or a user with comparable access permisions) a virus will only be able to touch the files in your home directory, which (if you're smart) should be backed up.One more thing of note is that it won't be able to format your hard drive or anything else like, unless you're logged in as the superuser browsing the internet in which case you're simply getting what you asked for.

My point was only to show that virus/worm writers write their code mostly for Windows/Outlook because that's what the vast majority of the world is using. They are killing more birds with one stone that way. When there is a huge userbase of clueless linux n00bs the virus/worm programmers are going to start setting their sights on those boxes.

 

[Nothinman]

As the saturation of Linux in the home increases so will the incident rate of virus and worm infections in linux machines. Wait and see.

Doubtfull, most of the things that get exploited on Windows aren't available on Linux and apps like Mozilla behave better when it comes to things like mime types that IE pretty much just fubars all up.

My point was only to show that virus/worm writers write their code mostly for Windows/Outlook because that's what the vast majority of the world is using.

Then why isn't apache being ravaged by exploits? It's crushing IIS on installed base on the Internet and yet IIS and Windows are still the main target. And I remeber a few years ago there was a RedHat/bind worm that went around, noone really noticed and I can't even remember the name of it, compare that to the fact that I still get attack attempts from CodeRed infected boxes daily.

 

[Megatomic]

This has been debated for years without anyone "winning".

And when did this discussion become about servers? Looking at the opening post in this thread I see a question about linux in the home...

I work in a unix environment. I know that security patches are released ALL THE TIME for unix. HP releases security fixes on a regular basis. If it was so secure, they wouldn't need to patch it up, right? (if you can bring up IIS I can bring up HP-UX )

 

[drag]

Most virus/worms writers are windows/outlook writers because THEY ARE EASY TO WRITE VIRUSES FOR,

That's why. Linux on the other hand is hard to write viruses for. If I run a e-mail application like evolution under a normal user I couldn't infect system files with a virus even if I wanted to and the app writer wrote it specificly to do that. What people forget is that there are REALY ARE differences between OSes. They aren't the same.

Outlook is swiss cheese when it comes to security. It is a badly designed and written application.

A virus writer couldn't right a virus that affects system files for Mozilla. Mozilla doesn't have root access as long as you don't run it as root. Any application or program I run as a user cannot affect any other files outside my own home directory unless I set it up to allow that access before hand.

Explorer on the other hand has system access. It's functionality is tied into the very basic parts of the OS. If you break Explorer you can crash the system. you can attack the system thru it. Mozilla you can't do that.

It doesn't have to do anything with how many people use it. It doesn't have anything to do with how well the application is written or anything like that. It has to do with how the system that is under it is designed.

People have been saying that viruses for Unix and unix-like Oses are around the bend. They say that it's just a matter of time and that once it begins to become more popular and affordable it will get viruses.... just like DOS. They've been saying this for over 20 YEARS and it hasn't happened yet. And is not likely to happen. I can find articles on the internet that go back to the early 90's.

Back then they just said that Unix viruses didn't happen because most Unix OSes only work on very expensive hardware. The average virus writer couldn't afford the computers nessicary to run Unix viruses, but since DOS was everywere so those are the computers that people used to writer viruses. OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER, people have been saying "in just a few years" "once it get popular". It's not like they have any proof for this, they just assume. It's just a assumption, thats all, their is no proof or anything.

I mean, think about it. Virus writers are all about publicity, right? They want to show off on their 7331 Sl{iL1s right? So why don't they write a few Linux viruses every once of a while? That would get them in the history book, to write the first widely spreading virus for a otherwise virus free OS.

Well they don't.

Yes it is POSSIBLE to write a virus for linux. But it is a very very hostile enviroment. People have done it before, and although 90% of these were just academic experements a couple got rewriten for hostile purposes and they just never got anywere.

Anyways. You know the command to get rid of a user's virus that they accidently downloaded?
"rm -f /home/username"

problem solved.

Viruses are like mold. To a virus a widely used Windows OS is like a loaf of bread in a plastic bag. Linux is like a spong soaking in vinegar. Yes it is possible for mold to grow on a spong soaking in vinegar, and you could probably find some that would do just that. But that's why we have 650,000 known viruses for MS operating systems and 13 for linux.

To say Linux will get more viruses just because it will become popular is just plain ignorance. Sure it will happen, but not anywhere near the scale that it happens in Outlook and friends.

All OSes are not created equal. Linux is DIFFERENT. It takes different technics to overcome linux security then windows.

Oh, and don't forget that worms are different then viruses. Viruses are just embeded code that is used to execute and install itself in other applications. You need to download and install a virus. Now WORMs are different. They actively seek out vunerable hosts and comprimise security to install themselves. They are generally quite a bit more sophisticated then the run of the mill virus. That's why the terms. Worms are more complex then Viruses. Viruses are just a carrier of their own DNA. Barely a living thing. Now worms are autonomise programs.

Now WORMS are another thing. Maybe worms could spread pretty widely on commonly used services. Maybe you could write one that can overcome some thing like SSH or Apache service and use that to install itself and redistribute itself.

Apache is the worlds most popular webserver. And most of them run on linux. Other OSes that are common are the BSD's and to a lesser extent Windows.

IIS is windows competetor...

Now if your logic holds out, then since Apache is 60% of the market and IIS webserver are 20% of the market then Apache should have 3 times the worms attacking it.

Now windows has: IIS-Worm.BlueCode, IIS-Worm.CodeGreen, IIS-Worm.CodeRed (a.k.a. "Code Red", "Bady"), IISWorm, and Worm.SQL.Slammer (aka Helkern, aka Sapphire) worms.


And apache had what.. Slapper and a BSD version Scalper?

Why is it then that IIS has so many more worms compared to Apache, even though Apache is much more popular webserver? Or could the Apache webserver is just that much more different from Microsoft offerings that they have a different set of worries?

What you have to worry about Linux is INDIVIDUAL attacks. A hacker trying to comprimise a specific weakness in a specific version of what ever service your running. There are dozens of different versions of different services in different linux OSes outthere. SO there are no generic thing you can do to protect your machine other then 1. have good passwords 2. only services you need 3. EXCELLENT passwords 4. put servers behind a firewall. 5. close to perfect passwords. 6. monitor your servers 7. NEVER run as root unless you have too.

Anything beyond that it is very important that you must do research and keep your system up to date. Otherwise you will get rooted eventually. After the cracker gets in he can use the inherent openness and power of the tools in the OS to rape you.

 

[drag]

Then why isn't apache being ravaged by exploits? It's crushing IIS on installed base on the Internet and yet IIS and Windows are still the main target. And I remeber a few years ago there was a RedHat/bind worm that went around, noone really noticed and I can't even remember the name of it, compare that to the fact that I still get attack attempts from CodeRed infected boxes daily.

Dammit you beat me to it..

 

[Megatomic]

Btw, I like linux. I use RH9 at work (in addition to WinXP and HP-UX). It's not quite as friendly to my hardware as Windows is but it is a nice OS for scientific computing (I use RH9 when I want to use Mathematica).

 

[Nothinman]

This has been debated for years without anyone "winning".

Yes, but the fact still stands that if the blackhats were interested in hitting the most web server boxes they'd go for apache, which doesn't happen. Yes people are stupid and will run virus.exe if you send it to them and say it's a cool screensaver, but that doesn't count for most of the problems in the wild with Windows.

And when did this discussion become about servers? Looking at the opening post in this thread I see a question about linux in the home...

Most of the people spreading nimda/Codered have IIS installed for no reason, not many businesses run off of comcast cable lines and I get almost all the hits from them these days.

I work in a unix environment. I know that security patches are released ALL THE TIME for unix. HP releases security fixes on a regular basis. If it was so secure, they wouldn't need to patch it up, right? (if you can bring up IIS I can bring up HP-UX )

And how many of them are for remote root?

 

[leolaw]

I think using Linux would build up your computer skill eventually. Since you have to set up most of the stuff manually, like compling source and installing rpm, all those stuffs.

Get a chance to mess around w/ linux, you will like it

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
And how many of them are for remote root?

This I can't answer.

 

[drag]

Plus another thing to think about is also how many of them broke part of your OS or made it run like crap. How many of them required to reboot or otherwise disrupt the continous operation of the servers?

(It's a honest question, I don't know the answer, but I suspect it)

Isn't that one of the major excuses windows admins use for leaving their boxes open to crackers and worms, that the patches sometimes seriously screw things up?

Anyways,

Here's a place you can go to find the advisories for different commonly used Linux OSes. Keep in mind that they range in seriousness from a kernel exploit to a buffer overflow exploit for the score keeping of the board game mah-jong

So it's not like linux is all perfect god-0S or anything. You still have to care about security.

 

[thornc]

Tham Drag and Nothinman beat me on the reply to you Megatomic! Nothing more to add!

I replied the way I did in my first post, because the topic's question has been asked and answered over and over again, here and everywhere else on the net.

Put it like this, linux is an alternative. You can try and like it, you can try and not like it or you can not try it. It's up to you. Your choice, but be gratefull to many that you have this choice. If it was up to M$, this choice would have been dead long time ago... OS/2, BeOS and others come to mind. Thank god that Linux and BSD are still around!

And drag, I'm starting to get used to your long posts , but you should consider refrainning yourself. Usually half of one of yours posts is enough to make a point, but being complete as you tend to be is also good sometimes.

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: Megatomic

Originally posted by: Nothinman
And how many of them are for remote root?

This I can't answer.

Nor does it matter. You can still blow up all of the user's files and email everyone whose email address the user has stored. OpenSSL worms can still affect other machines running OpenSSL (ala Code Red)... the one thing you gain is that unless someone reads mail as root, the worm/trojan can't affect the webserver which runs as a different user. However, the majority of windows worms we've seen were just email worms, or just IIS worms.