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Slackware Anti-Whatever(TM): The perfect solution to all your virus, spam, spyware, and other problems since 1993!! :-)

Seriously, though, I think it's kind of stupid that Microsoft's making an anti-spyware program - after all, weren't they responsible for the problem in the first place? And of course, it doesn't detect the biggest piece of spyware integrated into every Window$ system... (whatever that unnamed program at version 6SP1 is ;-)

I'd say that if Microsoft really cared they'd make a secure system. It isn't too hard, they already have the perfect starting ground...

...I would drop XP in a heartbeat.

Why? XP has many apps that don't run, or run poorly, on linux. You can't expect every application developer to port their code to every OS out there, and many end up only supporting Windows. And many others only support UNIX variants. Set up a dual-boot system and use whatever OS better fits your needs for the moment.

If you havent already, I suggest you download and install linux immediately. By doing so you are reducing the impact of winworms, and your letting SCO know that you dont care about them!

So install linux today!

"I'd say having a market share that'd at least make companies take Linux users into consideration would benefit all."

Reccommend Mandrake-Linux to your companies if they have Intel Pentium desktop computers, with keyboards, mouses, monitors, and graphics cards, and if you need an easy graphical installer which can be used without too much knowledge of the details.

Mandrake's what I use, and what I'd reccommend. But if you were asking about a less "typical" system, then you might find that the Mandrake installer is less than ideal. For example, if you have a hundred computers, and none of them have monitors or keyboards, you might be a bit stuck if you expected them to display a graphical installer somewhere. (actually, I'm pretty sure that Mandrake allows a text-mode install, so it'll still work on non-GUI systems)

In short, the Debian installer Must Just Work(TM) on as many computers as possible, whereas Mandrake, Windows etc. can get away with only working on the subset which most people use. It's a fair point; optimise for the most frequent case. But Debian can't do that without giving up it's reputation for being the universal operating system.

It's not as if Debian installer is difficult to use, either. Just hit Enter, lots of times. Although I'd be tempted to reccommend Knoppix if you're installing Debian on 'standard' computers - just boot from the CD, and then type "knx-hdinstall"

Mandrake is essentially what you're talking about.

Even though the content of this book is relevant and probably useful, the title should have been change to reflect more the Mandrake/Fedora Linux distributions. The fact that Red Hat will now be synonymous with their expensive Red Hat Enterprise edition, this will probably limit the audience and sale of this book.

Actually you are both wrong, the correct security patch is here.

Exactly, that is why no one can *cough* sell linux besides Linus himself.

Seriously, Linux is not restricted. I can buy a box of RedHat at a store and make as many copies, sell em if I want and still be within my rights.

I am not Chinese and do not speak Chinese, however I am working in China and was trying to introduce Linux. The following text treats Chinese == simplified, however most of the stuff should be valid for traditional too.

First of all, Chinese under Linux is hell. There seem to be no people being interested in developing open source in China. And if they do then it's difficult to find, crappy and unfinished. Just look at the Mozilla 1.0 simplified Chinese translation, it's not there, the guys did not move since 0.9.8. The Chinese HOWTO is quite old (1998!) and most of the links are dead and the information inside useless (practical experience).

You have several alternatives, I suggest you forget about them: RedFlag Linux (Experience based on 3.0, Redflag 3.2 beta ISO)
I had to use the text installation: I guess it was unicode without unicode support, so all I saw was messy characters but not Chinese. Somehow it's similar to redhat so I was able to click through. After the installation: whoops, the system is asking me for my registration key otherwise I can try RedFlag linux for 40 days (? do not remember how many exactly). It was not just a key, it was one of the Microsoft dimensions. After choosing the trial I ended up in Kde trying to look like windows. It had a tray, and a start bar, the Control Panel and so on. But I had a feeling it was there but it could not satisfy me, and I could not stand the little penguin patriotically holding that red flag up. The Chinese input seems to me to be the most advanced, but the system it self seemed to me unstable. Most modifications were in the interface and trying to lock down the system so you need to get that key after the trial period.

Office: RedOffice different company, same red. It's OpenOffice 1.0 looking like Office XP, that's all except there is no source code, no binaries, only a trial version and a price of 398RMB (~50US$) for the full version. Stick with Chinese OpenOffice.

Mandrake has in my opinion the best Chinese support. You only need to install it using the Chinese language. If you install it using English and then switch to Chinese you will have several problems, like you desktop disappearing etc. Do not use Unicode, use gb or big5 only, I was not able to see anything by switching to Unicode.

After the installation you should have a Chinese kde, Chinese Mozilla 0.9.8 and some more software in Chinese. The best input for simplified is Chinput, for Big5 Xcin and that's how Mandrake is doing it, if you use gb you will get Chinput by pressing Ctrl+Space and Xcin on a Big5 system.

Turbolinux seems to have taken over the Chinput project, therefore you will find no info on the net. They made an extension to Chinput called ZWinPro (ZWinPro-3.2-11.i586.rpm) you need to forceinstall it (solve some libary deps, install unicon but do not uninstall Chinput) and forceinstall Mandrakes Chinput again. This will give you Mandrakes Chinput with a configuration toolbar and some binaries which allow you to use Chinese input for all applications. There are some minor probs you will need to fix (font alias missing, etc), if you have trouble contact me.

The only problem about Chinput (and probably Xcin) is: it's dumb, the windows input tries to guess what you are typing. Means, you need to write character by character on Linux, does not matter if you use Pinyin or Woubi (or what ever you call it). This is very unconvenient and a killer for every Chinese linux desktop. Nobody will want to type 10 min on Linux when he can be finished in 2 on windows.

Next get the Chinese version of OpenOffice1.0 and English Mozilla 1.0. If you want to use a Chinese browser stick to konqueror, Mozilla 0.9.8 is not stable and crashes randomly.

You will want to get some Chinese ttf fonts from windows, as the fonts on Mandrake are quite ugly.

paul

The computer will now know everything about you -- who you talk to, where you go, how you work. And all of this will be owned by Microsoft.

they won't know about me.

If the political situation in the US is your concern, you should be buying Red Hat (and other US open source companies) products by the truckload so they have the resources to fight back.

Yes I should, and I would too, if I was american, or richer.
But we have starving distributions in europe too. So I buy boxed sets from Mandrake instead.
Call me evil if you like, but I only have this much money, and I prefer to support something closer to home.

And speaking of low standards I find it disturbing that you call me a facist because I don't use your favourite distro.
You're very close to invoking Godwin's Law here...

By all means, go out and buy a truckload of RedHat7.3, it's more power to you. But don't tell me what to do, OK?

I note that ipcop is only on version 0.1.1 and I wonder if this means that the product is still evolving.

How would a product like Mandrake Server compare, apart from potentially being much bigger? (e-smith was only about 400 MB for the complete package).

Allow me to explain.

Alan Cox; Richard Stallman; Bruce Perens; Wichert Akkerman; Miguel DeIcaza.

What do you see in this list of names? Are there any African-Americans on it? Absolutely not, none of those names sound like one a self-respecting black person would have! No Maurice, no Luther, no Lil' Kim. There are many other lists such as this, you can see one here. Flip through each page, do you see anything other than white faces? Of course you don't, because Open Source and its adherents are ardent racists and they absolutely forbid access to the sacred 'kernel' by any person of color.

Lets look at another list, this time a compendium of the companies using Linux. Are there any black owned companies on that list? Nooooooo. How about these companies? They all have something to do with Open Source software, any of them owned by an African-American? No again. Here is an extensive collection of photographs from a LUG (Linux User Gathering) meeting, more can be viewed at that link. What is odd about these pictures, and every other photograph I have ever seen of a LUG meeting, is that there is not one single black person to be seen, and probably none for miles.

More racist overtones can be found by examining the language of Open Source. They often refer to 'white hat' hackers. These 'white hats' scurry about the Internet doing good, but illegal, acts for their fellow man. In stark contrast we find the 'black hat' hackers. They destroy the good works of others by breaking into systems, stealing data, and generally causing havoc. These two terms reflect the mindset of most Linux developers. White means good, black means bad. Anywhere there is black, there is uncontrollable destruction and lawlessness. Looking further we see black lists that inform other users of 'bad' hardware, Samba, an obvious play on the much hated Little Black Sambo book, Mandrake, which I won't explain except to say that the French are notorious racists. This type is linguistic discrimination is widespread throughout the Open Source culture, lampooned by many of its more popular sites.

It is also a fact that all Unix 'distros' contain a plethora of racist commands with not so hidden symbolism.

It can hardly be coincidence that the prime operating system of choice of the 'open source supremacists' - Linux, features commands which are poorly disguised racist acronyms. For example: 'awk' (All White Klan) , 'sed' (shoot nEgroes dead), 'ln' (lynch negroes), 'rpm' (raical purity mandatory), 'bash' (bring a slave home), 'ps' (persecute sambo), 'mount' (murder or unseat nubians today), 'fsck' (favored supreme Christian klan). I could go on and on about the latent racist symbolism in Linux, but I fear it would take weeks to enumerate every incidence.

Is there a single unix command out there that does not have some hidden racist connotation ? Suffice it to say that the racism pervades Linux like a particularly bad smell. Can you imagine the effect of running such a racist operating system on the impressionable mind ? I don't have to remind you that transmitting subliminal messages is banned in the USA, and yet here we have an operating system that appears to be one enormous submliminal ad for the Klan!

One of the few selling points of Open Source software is that it is available in many different languages. Browsing through the list I see that absolutely none are offered in Swahili, nor Ebonics. Obviously this is done to prevent black people from having access to the kernel. If it weren't for the fact that racism is so blatantly evil I would be impressed by the efforts these Open Sourcers have invested in keeping their little hobby lilly white. It even appears that they hate the Japanese, as some of these self proclaimed hackers defaced a web site with anti-Japanese slogans. Hell, these people even go all the way to Africa (South Africa mind you, better known as White Africa) and the pictures prove that they don't even get close to a black person.

Of course, presenting overwhelming evidence such as this is a bit unfair without some attempt to determine why these Open Sourcers are so racist. Much of the evidence I have collected indicates that their views are so deeply held that they are seldom questioned by the new recruits. This, coupled with the robot-like groupthink that dominates the culture allows the racist mindset to continue to permeate the ranks. Indeed, the Open Source version of a Klan rally, OSDN (known to the world as Open Source Developer's Network, known to insiders as Open Source Denies Negroes) nearly stands up and shouts its racist views on its demographics page. It doesn't mention the black man one single time. Obviously, anyone involved with Open Source doesn't need to be told that the demographic is entirely white, it is a given.

I have a sneaking suspicion as to why their beliefs are so closely held: they are all terrible athletes.

Really. Much like the tragedy at Columbine High School, where two geeks went on a rampage to get back at 'jocks', these adult geeks still bear the emotional scars inflicted upon them due to their lack of athletic ability during their teen years. As African-Americans are well known for their athletic skills, they are an obvious target for the Open Source geeks. As we all know, sports builds character, thus it follows that the lack of sports destroys character. These geeks, locked away in their rooms, munching on stale pizza and Fritos, engage in no character building activities. Further, they interact only with computers and never develop the level of social skill that allows normal people to handle relationships with persons of color.

Contrasted with the closed source, non-geeky software house Microsoft, Open Source has a long, long way to go.

Join me in my next article where I will lay bare the rampant anti-semitism in the Open Source community.

Here.

If only there were people who could somehow package applications for typical users. They could distribute precompiled binaries!

Ahh, a man can dream...