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Viruses and Market Dominance - Myth or Fact?
rocketjam writes "An article at The Register, authored by Scott Granneman of SecurityFocus, examines the conventional wisdom that if Linux or Mac OS X were as popular as Windows, there would be just as many viruses written for those platforms. Mr. Granneman bluntly says this is wrong, then proceeds to detail the fundamental differences between those OS's and Windows which make Windows an easy and inviting target for virus-writers, as opposed to the Unix-based platforms."
If at least ./ authors could turn on their brain before writing an article. Linux is not Unix-based. That's what SCO is trying to tell people. It is a Unix-like system. Stop spreading SCO's FUD, please!
Stuid users.
If Linux (or any other OS) is going to be accepted by the idiots who allow viruses to spread (the majority of users) mail-clients that can exec an attachment with one click will have to arrive.
The thing that allows viruses to spread is people that want everything done automagically.
Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in lab rats.
a Linux user would have to read the email, save the attachment, give the attachment executable permissions, and then run the executable.
Ok, so basically all things absolutely opposite to intrinsic corporate (read: secretary) thinking. Glad to see we're comparing apples and oranges here. Come back to planet Earth, please.
Even as less sophisticated users begin to migrate to Linux, they may not understand exactly why they can't just execute attachments, but they will still have to go through the steps.
Damn right they wont understand the steps. Less sophisticated users wont migrate to Linux unless forced, an expensive proposition in the corporate world.
Further, due to the strong community around Linux, new users will receive education and encouragement in areas such as email security that are currently lacking in the Windows world, which should help to alleviate any concerns on the part of newbies.
Bwahahahahaa. From where?!?! IRC?? New linux users receive nothing but pain and torment from anyone other than paid technical support. Get over yourselves and just admit this simple folly. Right here this guy lost all credability. All of it.
Please, I emplore the Linux community, as a Windows admin, I want you to develop a better corporate desktop. But please please please get rid of this fantastic notion that the average user (the kind that make up 95% of Windows' userbase) has ANY fucking clue about anything! They dont understand permissions, they dont understand "making something executable", they dont understand package dependancy, they dont understand almost everything. It's sad, but a reality that must be recognized before it can be changed. Is it terrible? Yes. Do we wish it was different? Of course. Is it going to change by instituting rigid learn-permissions-or-die attitude? Hahaha, of course not, as I install another patch.
People like this, who spout off about changing how 2 billion people compute in the corporate office as if it were as easy as changing their socks, need a serious reality wakeup call. I'm a windows admin and I know windows is swiss cheeze. I dont deny it. Playing nice in a domain, browser elections, a disgusting reliance on RPC, abhorrent permission expectations, the need to be "chatty" with every fucking box on the network, poor quota enforcement (lack thereof for groups), poor multiple desktop support.. we know all of this. We know its bad in many areas.
But changing it starts by losing this utopian attitude that "the user will just adapt". Bullshit. That reeks of corporate office mentality inexperience. Understand your target audience before you try converting them.
I would be very interested to learn how a Linux corporate office operates. And not 10 or 20 or 100 people in the office. I'm talking 6,000 or 7,000 non-domain-managed, secretary-level-of-technical-knowledge employees. Let's stop screwing around.
Please god stop the agony.
Besides, what's your point. In windows (NT/XP/2k), you can't run an installer without being an admin or power user. Which is the bottom line: a properly secured system doesn't care if the GUI consists of one big button in the middle of the screen that says "INSTALL A VIRUS".
In fact, how is anything you just said (remotely getting files, updating the system) different from apt-get? Look past the pretty pictures of a GUI. Does apt-get go over SSH? no. How do you know then that it's not being hijacked? Don't say MD5, you might have one fat mother sitting between you and your package distributions.