Slashdot Mirror
Linux in Canada
Flxstr writes "Lots of Linux articles in Canada's national newspaper today, starting with Calgary switching from SUN Unix to Red Hat Linux. Another article discusses whether Linux will become a target for viruses as its popularity grows. This article mentions how Linux costs less, so more firms are becoming interested. Finally, an article discusses how pushes by major vendors such as IBM, HP, and others is speeding acceptance of Linux over other alternatives. Altogether, some good articles for any CIO's desk."
Linux, eh?
What's that, a Pengiun? There ain't no penguins in Canada!
Casual Games/Downloads
Canadian dollars cost less than American dollars.
I have been pwned because my
As we all really know viruses are spread by stupidity of users, not the OS'es, so Linux popularity on the desktop will be it's deciding factor to virus targeting.
As it becomes easier to use and more useful to dumbasses who still open attachments they aren't expecting, it will likely be targeted more by virus writers.
According to the Bank of Canada's website US$699 ~= CA$917.79
Trolling is a art,
In my opinion, Canada is definitely a more favourable environment for Linux. Partly because of less Microsoft influence spreading FUD about it, and partly because they don't develop laws designed specifically to stifle technology like the DMCA and the Patriot act. ... I'm not proud any more :(
I used to be proud to be an American because of our technological culture
Even if this is teh case I think the bigger problem will be when we have more Joe Blogs users who surf the internet as root. I see a lot of n00bs doing it and we always try and talk them round.
Even with the distro installers creating a normal acount its still worryinglt common. Run as root and you are more likely to be pwned in a nasty way.
A (Mostly) Proud Calgarian.
We have more than one, you know.
Will someone please tell these morons that the underlying architecture of *nix based OS's with their permission structures, and the need for admin passwords to do any system level changes, make them MUCH harder to write a serious virus for. SCREAM it if they don't hear you. I'm really starting to get tired of this crap.
Windows is also more standardized than Linux, Mr. Friedrichs says. There are a number of distributions of Linux from different vendors, with differences significant enough that a virus or worm designed for one won't necessarily have the same effect on all the others. That fragmentation is a good thing when it comes to discouraging virus writers who want their work to have the maximum impact.
There's another advantage that they don't mention. Linux plays nicely with the BSDs, Solaris, OS X, and most other operating systems, so it really is easier to have a diverse environment - not just diverse distributions, but diverse operating systems and architectures.
Yes, Windows will work okay on a heterogenous network, but it doesn't really like it much. Compared to the shared UNIX foundations of Linux, OS X and BSD it is much easier to have all of them happily running side by side on the network sharing resources. Linux or Solaris workstations for the research division, Macs for the designers, Linux and/or BSD for the servers, developers get to choose their platform... and maybe even a nice pretty GNOME or KDE desktop for the paper pushers.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
About those viruses becoming more prevalent...
Can someone balance that FUD with equivalent numbers from MacOS X?? It's a lot more popular than Linux, and both haven't been plagued with viruses(yet) in widely publicised numbers.
The bit about multi-user was nice, but user-education about the benefits of proper privilege separation is very low, and needs to be addressed by those people who think changing OSes is a solution to the social problem of viruses. Of course, a lot of CIOs would rather use viruses to justify spending half a mil to change servers, than 10000$ on training... Even on equivalent returns...
That's also a social factor.
I goto SMU and I know that we (as in cs faculty) have been slowly getting the univeristy aquianted with the whole open source ideas. Problem is there are still many people to educated, the in house tech support peeps still havn't fully grasped the whole idea I don't use Windblows and manage to be able to figure out how to map a network drive without logging 1st into the NT network and using all the XP "special" login scripts...
Now now, very few Canadians actually hate Americans. Many joke, but few hate.
Not only do we have more than one newspaper, we are also proud to announce that we have more than one telephone, as well as more than one automobile!
It takes user stupidity to infect a Linux box with a virus, namely because you _don't run as root_ unless it's necessary (su, please) and no code is therefore fully trusted. Therefore, it takes an idiot running as root, _multiple_ steps thanks to the encrypted archive files), and a Linux port of a virus to infect a Linux box.
With Windows, it's open, input password, extract, run. Wow. You're boned. Simple, ain't it?
Linux is secure simply because no one runs as root for daily work. Those who do are either idiots or have _really_ strong bowels.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
Cool. When did Steve get a car?
The following replies are posted by unwashed nerds.
A few years ago (10?) the Alberta government started to move the primary focus of Alberta business away from the Oil patch. At that point in time, Alberta was sort of a one-trick pony - most of the head offices for the Oil industry were here (and situated in Calgary), with a large number of the smaller businesses supporting the larger (fewer) oil companies.
If the Oil economy went down, so did the rest of Alberta. Bad.
Over the past 10 years, business diversity has increased a tremendous amount; the oil industry is still a large part of our economy, but not so large that we'd be hammered to death if the price of oil dropped substantially. It would hurt, but much less than it would have 10 years ago.
Part of the reason for this success is the high level of technology in this province. Calgary especially is very high tech, and this latest story just enforces that point. Businesses tend to move fairly quickly here, and are able to take advantages of the benefits of newer technology.
Through the use of and research into technology, Calgary is both a very good place to work and live.
" Linux was like the dancing dog -- it's not about how well it does, it's that it does it at all."
that is very disrespectful. how about a dancing penguin?
You need people like me so you can point your fuckin fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So what that make you? Good?
"Another article discusses whether Linux will become a target for viruses as its popularity grows."
Yes, it will and distros like Lindows that run the default user as root had better get their act together. Poor judgement calls like that could make Linux the next security joke right behind Microsoft.
I just installed Mandrake 10.0 and noticed that it offers an open source anti-virus product called "CLAM." According to the docs this product will automatically update its virus definition files. So assuming that these files are kept current we may be way ahead of the curve on this.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
...but Calgary should be switching to OpenBSD. They'd have plenty of top notch support nearby.
The meme police, They live inside of my head
Mr. Friedrichs says the majority of viruses and worms today are aimed at Windows, because of its large installed base. Threats that target Windows also tend to have more impact and get more publicity than those aimed at Linux, because there are so many Windows-equipped computers for them to affect, he says.
From what I have read and understand, the install base has nothing to do with it (or very little at least). The problem is that MS software is so easy to crack.
For example, MS Exchange has roughly a 85 million install base. That email system has been hit hard over the past several years. Lotus Notes has not been hit nearly as hard (if at all) during the same time frame. If install base had anything to do with it, then one would assume that Lotus Notes has a substantially lower install base than MS Exchange. The fact is that Lotus Notes has a comparable install base (of roughly 90 million).
It's the insecure software that is the problem, people!
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
I might point out that the telephone was invented in Canada!
at least it doesn't echo *s :)
We've always been at war with Eurasia.