Is the GDI exploit a nail in the coffin of Windows and a boost to Linux?

From: Walter Gibbs (waldgibbs_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 09/29/04 

Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 08:42:56 -0400

I've been using windows since 3.1 - it's the only gui I ever knew.

Keeping up with the latest AV programs, anti-trojan programs, hosts files,
releases of Process Guard, scanners like Spybot and Adaware, and all the
rest of the array of programs designed to keep my windows pc safe - all of
that has been entertaining and instructive.

I had heard about Linux, but thought of it as a monitor filled with
hard-to-read cold white letters, on a black background with a temperature
close to absolute zero, and an insistently blinking cursor waiting for me
to input an esoteric command.

It was enough to hear the word 'Linux' to drive me back to the warm gui of
windows and the delightful stew of opinions about this or that anti-virus
program.

The fellowship of windows users, struggling, as I was, against a sea of
crawling, scratching creatures intent on looting my computer, meagre as
the gleanings from my C drive might be - that fellowship, that common
suffering, drove me to accept, gratefully, the offerings of Redmond;
offerings accepted in the hope that finally, now, with this latest patch,
this latest version of the os, finally, the buffer overflows would be
contained.

Winxp was a great advance in security over win98, was it not? Surely
Winxp2 would be a fortress against the cyberspace slimeballs! But it, too,
needed patches, many of them. And the patches, even if only 180k, took a
long time to install; what kind of OS would be so inefficiently, even
irrationally, written, that a 180k patch would take so long to install?
Why would so many improvements to an OS still leave it so vulnerable and
in need of patching?

Linux began to seem less remote and icy; maybe its reputation as being
relatively immune to hacking made it worth looking into.

And then there appeared the ISO of Mandrake Move - 15 minutes to download
with my cable connection - burn the CD image - boot up.

Revelation! A gui as warm as windows; 30 seconds to connect to a website
with Mozilla; two minutes to configure Evolution to download email; one
minute to configure Pan to download a few favourite newsgroups.

In no time at all my bandwidth was saturated with simultaneous downloads
of the 3-cd Mandrake 10.0 Official. The install was as easy as windows!!

Everything recognized except my video camera. The printer driver isn't
available for Linux, except as a third-party item for $, but I can make do
with one of our other pcs.

The scanner was recognized and was useable via Kooka and Gimp. All the
image editing I could need is available in Gimp.

Real Player has a linux version that was easily installed and quite lean
(it looks like they haven't had time to install the spyware for the Linux
version). Audio and video were soon streaming their way into my monitor
and speakers.

Burning CDs is a breeze using K3B - it even does auto-speed burning,
something I haven't seen in Nero.

After some floundering, and with excellent help from the posters to
alt.os.linux.mandrake, I figured out how to configure Samba and connect to
the other two (windows) pcs on our lan.

There are programs to edit audio and video files, to play MP3s, to play
MPEGs; the OpenOffice suite of programs - spread***, word processing,
html editing, etc.; instant messageing via ICQ, MSN, etc.; ftp server,
video conferencing, remote administration of the pc, conversion of
documents to PDF format, etc. etc. etc. - the whole kit and kaboodle of an
up to date pc, and all for the cost of the CDs, and all contained in the
CDs - nothing else to download or install.

Even though I am having to work harder than I like to make sense of a lot
of the OS, it was quickly obvious that it is logical and elegant, and that
my difficulty is in a natural slowness in this realm, perhaps exacerbated
by being on a windows diet for so many years.

It didn't take more than a few days for the scales to fall from my eyes,
and to see windows as a misshapen, bloated, irrational piece of software,
trading on the ignorant fears of its users.

The GDI exploit is, in my humble opinion, just one more revelation of the
shoddy nature of the windows OS; I hope it will convince a few more people
to give Linux a try.

After cursorily testing 4 or 5 distributions, I have settled on Mandrake
10.0 as the easiest to configure. You may prefer something else; try as
many as you can; if you have a fast connection, it is easy to download
several versions of Linux.

Whatever you do, get rid of windows. Depending on your circumstances, you
may be able to switch immediately, or it may take you a year; but get rid
of it: the OS is shoddy and doesn't deserve your patronage.

My situation is one pc that uses only Linux; another that runs a mail
server which I have to keep running until I can figure out how to set up
Postfix; the third pc is used by my wife, who runs several heavy-duty
graphics programs not available in Linux versions.

I hope, in time, to convince her to dual-boot, using windows only for the
graphics programs; in the longer run, maybe the vendors of the graphics
programs will come around to Linux versions.

If you are running a standalone pc, and your main use of the pc is web
browsing, and sending and receiving email and newsgroup posts, then you
can switch to Linux today. If you have a digital camera, or a scanner, or
a printer, the OS will probably recognize them immediately.

If you are still hesitant, than set up a dual-boot so that you can boot
into either windows or Linux. I was able to do it right off the bat, which
means almost anyone can do it.

Take a look at www.distrowatch.com, and follow the links to the ISO
downloads of the various distributions. I didn't have any problem in
finding ftp sites that allowed downloads of 150+ kb/sec. If you have a
cable connection, it's an easy way to get the ISOs.

If you don't, you can buy them from vendors at what look like reasonable
prices, though I don't know what they will want for shipping.

Quantcast