Slashdot Mirror

Actually, I can't remember last Linux Zero-Day bug.

Linux has certainly had a number of security bugs that existed for many years and could have been exploited for privilege escalation and unauthorized access to machines:
5-year-old privilege escalation bug
8-year-old privilege escalation bug
14-year-old sigreturn bug

Now you could take the dismissive, naive approach and say these don't matter and weren't exploited simply because you didn't hear about it in any well-publicized, poorly-executed attack but how many more of these ancient (and recent) vulnerabilities exist in the Linux kernel unfixed and unbeknownst to the maintainers? There could be none (unlikely), there could be many (much more likely) and as the kernel gets more and more complex and more and more bloated with kernel-mode drivers in the source tree it becomes even more likely that security vulnerabilities will be incorporated and go unnoticed.

NB: I'm not discussing this in the context of Linux Vs something else or Open Vs Closed, just that the Linux kernel is no more secure than any other software.

. 90+% of Nvidia's customers don't use FOSS at all.

That may be true, for all I know or care but it's not for want of trying. As their traditional desktop market is dissapearing into irrelevance, with Apple having already decided to skip Nvidia they are desperate to get into the Android market and without that they are in deep trouble.

There is a real reason why their PR people were out in force in response to Linuses recent commends and if I were investing, the fact that they failed to get traction with the community would mean I would be moving my money out of Nvidia.

Some examples from the press:
http://www.maas360.com/news/industry-news/2012/01/banks-begin-to-tackle-byod-800677691/
http://www.fiercecio.com/story/banks-learn-accept-byod/2012-04-29

Also, it's not "your" account, it's theirs.

In short, you have a pretty interesting idea of "niche".

And desktop sales (not laptops) were at around 126 million in 2009. Each one of those sales used an x86 chipset. 11.5 million... 126 million... Yeah, I'd call that a niche market when you take in the full picture. And these numbers don't take into consideration laptops which for the past few years have been more then desktops.

Hewlett Packard also did this last year, as well as just a few months after Mark Hurd took office. Both times, the rumors were closely paired with internal rumors of layoffs. Both times, HP denied that the two were related.