Re: Help me choose
From: Leslie A Rhorer (lrhorer_at_satx.rr.com)
Date: 02/07/05
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Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 07:48:45 GMT
"ray" <ray@zianet.com> wrote in message
news:pan.2005.01.31.16.27.22.419324@zianet.com...
> On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 06:42:30 +0100, I.C. Koets wrote:
> I've avoided XP due to MS's insane activation policies.
I did, too. However, I was also misinformed. Their activation policies
are goofy, but not as bad as I was led to believe.
> It is true that the MS software available has serious security flaws.
> 'Experts' estimate that an MS box can be on the internet about 10 minutes
> before it is seriously compromised. My assessment - MS is fine as long as
> you keep it off the internet.
I strongly suggest a firewall. *nix systems are not immune to Internet
attacks. We've had numerous Sun and Compaq server class systems running
Solaris suffer attacks which required the systems be taken offline. Ours
must face the Internet, because they are Internet servers (we're a major
national ISP). OTOH, our MS Exchange servers and some of our 2003 Servers
also face the Internet directly, and they haven't had any more or less
problems with attacks. Bottom line, buffer overflow vulnerabilities exist
in all sorts of software (Including historically Sendmail, Apache, Netscape,
and even the CDE), and an improperly serviced *nix machine will be just as
vulnerable to a hacker as an MS machine. Believe me, because one of my
duties (among about a million others) is maintaining several HP-UX machines
so they continue to meet military security requirements. Several of our
systems serve high security military installations. I see IAVAs in my
sleep, and I can all but fill out the intro questions on the STIG with my
eyes closed.
> SuSE 8.2 is about two years old now - the Linux offerings improve with
> each release. I suggest you try some of the 'live CDs' before you make any
> decision. Knoppix is the king of the hill. Live CDs will boot and run
> from CD without any installation - most of them do an excellent job of
> hardware detection and setup.
I'm running the Debian distro on one of my home servers. I like it,
although I'm having some problems. Don't let the statement fool you,
however. I have never - and I mean *NEVER* - loaded and configured OS
software with applications on a machine where I didn't have quite a few
problems, and I've been loading OSes and applications on machines since
1974. 'Back then, though, most of the machines had toggle switches on the
front panel, and the software was often on punch tape. My assessment of
Linux so far is it is no worse nor vastly better than MS in this respect.
Of course, mileage with other distros may vary quite a bit. Ditto with
other application suites. The main apps on my Linux server are SAMBA, DHCP,
and XDMCP - if I can ever get XDM to work. The minor apps -all working
well - are the defaults whihc came with the distro (Mozilla, KDE, etc).
> The state of software is also much improved. If OpenOffice has a problem
> with complex formatting of a MS Word doc, then AbiWord will probably
> handle it. For me, the OO presentation software is much easier to use than
> PowerPoint - and files are compatible. Gnucash does everything I needed
> from Quicken - it will not export QIF files, though.
Unfortunately, I'm stuck with the corporate VPN (Black Ice) and
applications like Remedy, Outlook (Exchange, not POP3), REACT, RevPlans,
People Soft, and various Web based tools which will only run with IE,
because they take advantage of bugs in IE. Believe it or not, REACT runs on
Solaris servers, but hasn't a Linux client, AFAIK (Go figure!). I'm not
sure about Remedy - I think it has a *nix port, but I don't think I could
convince corporate IT to buy me a copy.
> If you need to run old MS apps, I suggest you do it from an MS product -
> it will work better than the MS emulators that run on Linux. Maybe you
> should think about a dual boot scenario - MS for running your MS software
That, or why not just keep the old MS machine around for the MS apps?
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