Linux Distributions Respond to Forrester

dave writes "GNU/Linux vendors Debian, Mandrake, Red Hat, and SUSE have joined together to give a common statement about the Forrester report entitled "Is Linux more Secure than Windows?". Despite the report's claim to incorporate a qualitative assessment of vendor reactions to serious vulnerabilities, it treats all vulnerabilities are equal, regardless of their risk to users. As a result, the conclusions drawn by Forrester have extremely limited real-world value for customers assessing the practical issue of how quickly serious vulnerabilities get fixed."

Comments

no way!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but I simply can't believe that a research company, a company DEVOTED TO RESEARCH, would come out with biased opinions influenced by money.

I recevied it in my mail and I couldn't believe it

[Retype]

When I started reading the mail I first thought that debian, redhat, suse and mandrake had got together to make faster pacthes to their vulnerabilities :)) Well no, I was wrong, they are just writing a response letter together :(

Time to go back to sleep and dream of Distributions uniting forces.

Excuse me

[JoeBaldwin]

But when you "unbiased, fair reporting, with due impartiality to both sides of an argument", why does Slashdot immediately spring to mind?!

Missing Distributions?

[binary_life]

Hey why aint gentoo on the list? I guess they're still compiling their response ,p (PS I love gentoo, so don't go flaming me!)

Proof Linux is more secure

[stox]

It is obvious the only way to truly secure a machine is to kill the users. There are more windows users than Linux users, therefore, it is easier to secure a Linux than it is to secure Windows. This also clearly explains why OpenBSD is one of the most secure OS's. Of course, the most secure system is StoxOS&TM which currently has no users and is perfectly secure.

Re:Slant

[aardvarkjoe]

Well, of course the news here is slanted. Otherwise they'd have to call it "Pipedot."

Article Summary

[big_groo]

"Is Linux more Secure than Windows?" *cough*Bullshit*cough* signed, Noah Meyerhans, Debian Vincent Danen, Mandrakesoft Mark J Cox, Red Hat Roman Drahtmueller, SUSE

Re:As opposed to LinuxWorld or NewsForge Reports

[Killswitch1968]

It's always great to see slashdot accusing other people of pro-MS bias.

very slanted

[bangular]

These reports are so dumb. In high school, I remember learning that averages don't give a good representation, because extremes will skew the numbers. The median is a better representation. Funny how some people don't seem to remember that. By Forrester's methods of research, they could come to the conslusion that the average american has one testicle (statisticly true btw).

Re:very slanted

[natrius]

So... if they used the median instead, they would come to the conclusion that the average American has no testicles since there are more women than men in America. Is that really any better? I don't want North Korea thinking we have no balls.

Re:very slanted

[BlackHawk-666]

Since the population is slightly skewed (IIRC) towards women (~51%), and we are choosing to round down, I'd say the average American has no balls, mainly due to rounding errors ;->

Actual Conversation

[cgenman]

"You know, ever since I upgraded to Windows XP I haven't had a single Blue Screen of Death."

"Does it randomly reboot?"

"Sometimes."

"You have automatic reboot on. It's like a Blue Screen of Death, but without the pretty colors."

Re:some merit in the study

[Tony]

But if linux were on every desktop, I'll bet you'd be getting a few emails every day with attachments like "your_paper.sh" that most of us would trivially delete, but many would stupidly run (and these are the same users who would login as root to check their email).

Damn. Got another attachment-- "your_paper.sh". The "sh" must stand for "super-helpful." Cool.

Let's see if I can read it. Do I want to view it, or save it? Uhm... view it.

Gibberish. Starts with "#!/bin/bash". Should have known. Damn.

Let me save it. Then I can double-click it in my file manager.

Damn it! Same gibberish. Time to pull out the big guns, "Fucking Up Your Linux System For Dummies."

dummy@stupidhead> chmod a+x your_paper.sh
dummy@stupidhead> ./your_paper.sh

Usage: your_paper.sh [options] <level>

Where <level> is a natural number from the set [1-9]

Option is one of:

-a, --all Infect everyone in addressbook
-u <user> Infect only <user>
-s, --spam Invoke spam relay engine [default]
-e [1-9] Set embarrassment level of subject line
-m, --munge Destroy all files, for good measure
-d [1-9] Set debug level (9 = verbose)

dummy@stupidhead>

Good Damn It! I knew Linux was hard to use. I'm going back to MS-Windows, where everything is point-and-click.