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Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register)Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register)Posted Apr 4, 2006 17:14 UTC (Tue) by dw (subscriber, #12017)In reply to: Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register) by mmarq Parent article: Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register)
I will accept that the malware is a serious practical problem for users who aren't clued in. For larger setups though, Group Policy and network isolation can effectively prevent the problem of worms like that (for eg., Windows has had Authenticode, or even the simpler "exec only if MD5 is on the allowed list" for many years).
To qualify the statements in my previous post a little more, I was referring mainly to Windows as a desktop. The machine I type this on has not been reinstalled once since it was purchased (Windows XP; 4 years ago), and bar once-yearlyish maintainance (defrag, cleanup temporary files, unused applications), hasn't required much to keep it stable. I believe there have only been one or two occasions where I've had a forced reboot - SP1 and SP2 installation via Windows Update being the obvious culprits.
When I have had the choice I have always used Linux servers, for various reasons. One of the main things, is a Linux system is a hell of a lot more recoverable than a Windows box. Have you ever tried to deal with a corrupt system hive or SAM on a Windows machine? AFAIK you simply can't. :) Compare that to manually reconstructing a lost /etc/passwd with vim.
FWIW, in the past few years, the Windows Media Player installer hasn't permitted you to install until you have chosen your privacy options - it is perfectly possible at this stage of the install to configure it such that it will never connect to the Internet.
Cheers,
David.
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Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register) Posted Apr 4, 2006 17:16 UTC (Tue) by dw (subscriber, #12017) [Link] One last side note on the malware front: Microsoft now has much better infrastructure (in the form of sub UIDs in Vista, and Microsoft Antispyware for XP) in place for dealing with this threat, whereas the likes of OS X and Linux have none. It's another old mantra, but I believe it is still true: Linux is still yet to feel the full force of malware.
Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register) Posted Apr 4, 2006 18:36 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] Windows has a very poor software distribution mechanism to begin with.
A strict white-list of checksums will mean you can't easily deploy tools. Not to mention you can run just about anything without actually executing it (bash, perl, python, ld-linux, you name it).
And then there are "manual" scripts of human engineering.
Microsoft starts supporting, er, Linux (Register) Posted Apr 4, 2006 20:33 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] The machine i type my posts on, dont has a glitch since 2001 of virtue of staying out of early betas on it, and only with a rather basic firewall and no virus scan because i patch, or better said, update frequently.
Of course it has "some" management on it, nothing remotely comparable to other WinXP machines i worked on, and it has stayed on for weeks in a row in a "cable" direct connetion to the net without a problem ( a big "worry" in XP), thought usually i do it trough my NAT routed home network... and quite frankly KDE 3.4/5 series is much more joyfull than the XP environment.
The only occasional problem compared to WinXP is hardware device support!
Its nice to have Windows users on this forum, IMO,... its always nice to ear from the other side and or different opinions.
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