Slashdot Mirror
A CIO's View of SUSE's Enterprise Viability
onehitwonder writes "As part of an ongoing quest to find a viable alternative to the Microsoft desktop in the enterprise, well-known healthcare CIO John Halamka spent a month using Novell SUSE 10 as his sole operating system. His conclusion? It's good enough for the enterprise. In Windows vs. Linux vs. OS X: CIO John Halamka Tests SUSE, he explains how SUSE stacks up against RHEL, Fedora, XP and OS X (in a life-critical business environment), and which issues should influence an enterprise-class organization to adopt it."
We've had everyone from HardOCP to grandmas post their opinion on the "best desktop system" issue, but I think someone with not only workers and an enterprise on the line, but the life-and-death of people on his hands, is really going to give an honest opinion. He doesn't want deaths on his hands either directly or from his recommendations. I think everyone reading this post should give the article at least a cursory glance before jumping to their own opinions.
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
If anybody knows about medical tech, they do NOT run "laptops" or desktops on critical equipment.
/. , and it would have likely killed someone as it had them hooked up to a computer serial port.
The life-maintaining equipment runs only secure hardware, with mathematically proven code, and fiber-optic links for isolation (to prevent electrocution hazards). There was even a heart monitor someone made and posted to
SuSE will NOT run on the dangerous equipment. It will run on the network as a "online chart". Many people should be against that as well, for altogether different reasons. This is somewhat critical, as most med groups run paper charts just in case..
When it comes to sex, nerds everywhere claim that an inflatable doll is "good enough".
See http://www.medical-journals.com/r0313.htm
> Every time he launched the application, he had to wait five minutes to use it, until it synced with CareGroup's Microsoft Exchange server. If he deleted an e-mail before the entire store of deleted e-mails had synced, or if he tried sending an e-mail before all stored e-mails had synced, the application would crash.
I wish that someone would introduce Halamka to http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ - its _really_ fast and contains all the features that one would ever need.. and if not, there are plug-ins.
In the end, the best prices go to MS only shops. Which is perfectly reasonable. The fact that this leads to employees only seeing MS, and therefore not realizing that other choices exist, is an coincidence. OTOH, It can be said that any subsidizes, in the same that MS subsidizes the xBox, is worthwhile to maintain the desktop monopoly.
Then we have the terms of Vista use that restrict the virtualization of the product. If MS were competing, it would develop and OS that was the best base for virtualization. Instead, it merely licesnses the product as non virtual. If MS is not the OS that everyone sees on startup, then people might start to believe that MS is not the best choice.
It kind of reminds of hummers, and the assumption of others on the road, that wow, that person can afford to buy a hummer. People in the know realize that for many hummer drivers, the US taxpayer is paying for large percentage of the Hummer. In fact, some figure suggest that if you bought a new hummer, and took all the tax breaks, and sold it after 5 years, your total cost of ownership would be zero, thanks to the goodness of the conservative government.
MS products are the same way. A good deal if you can get, but not such a good deal if you won't play ball.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The author of the summary is flat wrong when he says the conclusion was "ready for the enterprise". If you actually RTFA the exact words were: "Though he personally is pleased with the OS, Halamka is not so sure he'd deploy it widely in his organization." Incredible that the poster of this article actually gets the conclusion 100% wrong. Biases like this is why nobody trusts technology people for an opinion of the readiness of new technology.
In case you didnot now the CIO fo a comapny is like a gernla in the armed froces. He says it is readay is good enioyug for me
Exactly......from the article: "For your average administrator or manager who is very comfortable with Windows 95, 98 and XP, it might be a little bit of a leap," he [Halamka] adds."
I've used SUSE 9.3-10.2 on a lightweight Dell laptop for the last 3.5 years. My experience was nearly identical, down the wifi connection issue after suspend and the work around. :)
I've used SUSE for a while. They pulled me away from RedHat with SUSE 9.0. It was the first linux I used that just worked after being installed. I didn't have to jigger with crap. RedHat lost me when they decided to put the desktop user in second place. I've used Linux exclusively for home and office for the past 5 years and it's been SUSE that made it enjoyable.
Too bad Novell felt the need to lick Balmer's d*** last fall. The best thing that could happen to the computing world is *not* greater compatibility between Linux and Windows. Windows is on its way disappearing into the ether. At the moment it fast becoming just a crappy API that can run (safely) in a VM to support the odd application that's not got a functional duplicate on Linux (eg. IE for testing web pages and some of the corporate crapware clients (oracle)). Too bad Hovispan forgot to read the judgment from the MS monopoly trial and pay attention to ever other poor bastard that thought they could dance with the devil.
The article says that many linux loyalist chided him for the distros he chose. I have to agree with them. It is not that difficult to do a search and see what is the most popular distro.
uname -a on one of GE's latest generation of CT scanners reports a version of Red Hat. Diagnosing cancer may not be as life critical as an EKG, but it's not something you want to have crash or degrade over time or have some kind of file quirk that screws up images.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What sort of CIO does in-depth desktop testing? A terminal geek.
What sort of desktop does a terminal geek choose? A terminally geeky desktop.
What will his business users do shortly after this rubbish is foisted on them? Terminate the geek.
His conclusion certainly isn't that "It's not ready." It's that he likes what he saw, but is ignorant of some of the tools he would need to use, and thus isn't in a position to judge.
Suppose there is a file he needs on a W2K3 share in an existing AD domain. How can he get Linux or OSX to authenticate into the domain to have access to the share? Don't you need to make a descision up front wether to be a MS shop or a *NIX shop. Samba could be a partial solution, but the problem is a Samba *NIX server will still not tightly integrate into an AD domain.
What a maroon. I know you won't get that so it's okay.
His real opinion is this:
The X60 running Novell SUSE is the first Linux laptop I have used that is good enough to be my only computing device,
That is astounding after only one month of use. Most users take years to shake bad old M$ habits and almost as long to learn which of the dozens of free packages is their favorite for any given task. Most people want their Windoze safety blanket for a year or so. This kind of endorsement is ringing - he's saying that he could do without Windoze tomorrow, forever. He's right but has not had time to develop real confidence in his opinion, which is reasonable given the billion dollars a month M$ spends on marketing and lock on major vendors.
To be fair, you should have quoted his worry. What's keeping him from recommending widespread deployment? Well, this:
"I dont know enough about the remote management tools and capabilities for it"
OMFG! and,
"For your average administrator or manager who is very comfortable with Windows 95, 98 and XP, it might be a little bit of a leap"
Free software absolutely kills Windoze for remote control and management. The fact that thousands of computers have been corralled into clusters for decades should tell anyone that remote configuration has been mastered long ago in the free software world. It's amazing how much easier things are when you don't have integrated licensing and copy protection built into the product itself. On top of that, Novel offers it's own set of tools to manage mixed environments which are widely admired. This is a slam dunk for free software and Suse.
The other concern is a bit condescending. Even fanboys, given proper support and encouragement, soon learn how much better free software is. It's true that the deeper you are into M$, the harder it is for you to see anything else, but those who escape become the biggest M$ haters. They, more than anyone else, bear the brunt of M$'s intentional waste. It makes them angry but they accept it without knowing any better. Eventually, the lies melt away and all the talk about software freedom sinks in. Liberate them for just a while and it's all over.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He's not running a nuclear reactor -- He's just doing email and typical business person stuff. Nobody lets a CIO do potentially dangerous or important things.
Oh, I just hate to quote the fine article but:
It's kind of like ... unsafe at any speed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I wouldn't put OSX or Lunix on anything more important than an automatic coffee maker. And actually, even that's too important for them.
Do you think this will help the image of Novell after drinking Microsoft's Kool Aid? No, only when pigs fly.
If your boss offered you the chance to migrate from the Beast to Novel, you would be crazy to say no. The more free software people use, the better. I'd rather everyone used nothing but free software and I don't like that Novel endorsed M$, but let's not get carried away. When the alternatives are to stick with seven year old software and slowly migrate to Vista or migrate to Suse, Suse is the clear winner.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Too bad Hovispan forgot to read the judgment from the MS monopoly trial and pay attention to ever other poor bastard that thought they could dance with the devil.
He does not really think M$ is co-operating with Novel and is close to fed up with Outlook/Exchange:
I think he's catching on very well for a big dog. Most of us would be very happy with a boss this open and clued.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Or as we used to say when I was a biffspah, "A gorm in the pudge is worth two upside the head!"[0]
[0] Yeah, I know it's a non-sequitur, but them lampshades is sooooo tasty....
Here are some of the recent impressions from someone who just had to deploy a 120-node SLES 9 cluster, shortly followed by an 80-node RHEL 4 cluster. This is not scientific research, so here is my unscientific professional opinion: both RHEL and Suse are a royal pain the ass to install, configure and maintain.
I have over a decade of Unix sysadmin experience (Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX) and about five years Linux experience (Red Hat and SuSE primarily). To give you an idea of my personal preferences and my unbiased nature: my personal laptop runs Solaris 10; my work laptop runs Suse 10; my home PC is a Windows XP Pro; my work desktop #1 is RHEL 4 WS; desktop #2 is Suse 9.1; and desktop #3 is a Sun Blade running Solaris 10.
So what is my problem with Linux? I like Suse as a desktop system. It's easier to configure and re-configure then Red Hat, mostly thanks to Yast and some logical organization of things. I am not a GUI sysadmin: I live inside Korn shell. Still, having a well-organized GUI is useful because you just can't remember everything.
All the little annoying things, which I can deal with on my laptop or desktop, are multiplied to obscene proportions in a large cluster. Scali and Yast apparently don't like each other; there are strange transient NFS problems having something to do with large file support; patching is more complicated then it has to be with RHEL and absolutely infuriating with SLES.
I don't want to go into all the bugs and idiosyncrasies of the two leading enterprise linuxes, the bottom line is: you want reliability and performance - stick with the big 'nixes and leave Linux to ripen a bit more. You want a desktop, then go with Linux, if Windows is not your cup of tea. But be prepared to catch heavy flak from your former Windows users.
There is no such thing as a "typical user". Rather there are typical tasks. Web browsing, emailing, text messaging are all trivial things you can do with most modern operating systems. Or can you? How many of your users ran into problems with video and sound using a Linux desktop? Why don't Java applets in Web pages never seem to work right under Solaris? Why does a thousand other things go wrong?
Is Linux more buggy than Windows? I don't think so, but many of my users do. They are switching from Windows to Linux - not their choice to begin with - and, being already used to all the Windows problems, they find Linux bugs to be new and worth complaining about. A lot. I have Suse 10 running on my laptop PERFECTLY. Everything works right: video, sound, wireless, card reader, volume buttons and all the other little things that usually annoy Linux users. But it wasn't easy getting there and it has to be if Linux is ever going to squeeze Windows market share. Not every PC user is a Unix sysadmin and they don't have to be.
...and one of his complaints was that darn pesky "update notification"? Is he for real? People actually pay this dweeb serious money to be a CIO and he doesn't realize that a lot of updates are security updates, instead, he was looking for a way to turn the update feature *off*?
Linux is ready for joe sixpack's desktop, because even the dullest there can grok "update". It is obviously not ready for functional 'tards like this dude.
Whatever corp he works for, short their stock, eventually they are going to get pwned bad.
History is littered with the corpses of those who entered into technology partnerships with Microsoft.
Some people learn from the mistakes of others. Some people need to learn the hard way.
Buying from a doomed vendor is often a bad move.
But that, uh, maroon, proves linux is ready for the desktop. arf
The placement of GNOME as the default desktop environment does not help matters either. This is not an endorsement of KDE either. But I hear KDE 4.0 will be a killer.
By the way...does anyone know whether the folks touting Linux as a possible Windows and Mac replacement have made its fonts beautiful by default?
This would not hurt at all. I hope slashdotters will not tell me to turn on the "byte code interpreter" or use "use freetype version xxx", or "load M$ fonts" and what not in order to have a decently looking desktop.
Desktop computers ("PCs" in the vernacular) run things like, please excuse me if this raises your blood pressure, Microsoft Office, Windows Explorer, Outlook and Bugs Bunny wallpapers. The critical systems typically use an embedded OS (ventilators and other machines that go "ping") or they run some UNIX variant (CTs, MRIs).
I'm trying desperately to get our small hospital off of XP. All we run are the above "productivity" apps and a bizarre VT100 terminal program that talks to the billing / order entry / lab system. Any reasonable Linux system would be fine except that company that runs the back end system won't allow anything but this oddball emulator to talk to their system. (Don't even think of VMware or similar - that's much too complex for them).
But anyway, don't have a heart attack if you see the green and blue wavy fields on the screen at your local ER. It won't shock you.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Free software absolutely kills Windoze for remote control and management."
/disclaimer, I work for a management software vendor, so I'll post anonymously.
I beg to differ. While there are some very good solutions out there for managing *nix machines, they reveal the fact that they were designed wholly for the server market. Desktops are different, and the people who administer them are different (for one thing, I know of very few people who are in charge of >1000 desktops who even read slashdot at all).
Imagine that you've taken a new job and you're in charge of 1000 desktops and laptops, in a 50/50 split, spread across three or four sites and a VPN which is actually used by very few of the field people. You've just bought or downloaded a shiny new management tool. The machines were deployed ad hoc by your predecessor, and there's a directory server. Just to get started,
1) How are you going to install it?
2) How are you going to ensure that it stays installed if your users don't like it?
3) How will you target systems for software distribution or OS deployment?
4) How will you authenticate your technician's ability to do things to specific users?
If it's Windows, the directory service answers all four questions, and so simply that a monkey could do it. If it's Linux, a very advanced administrator could answer all four questions too, but the likelihood has gone down a lot. If it's OSX, you're out of luck, the directory service just supports number 4. Of course, Linux and OSX both support joining Active Directory.
The conclusion of the article is that:
Though he personally is pleased with the OS, Halamka is not so sure he'd deploy it widely in his organization.
Although he apparently thought much more of SuSE then he did of RedHat, which is covered in this article:
http://www.cio.com/article/41140
Incidentally, in that article (which is the actual comparison) he says the best OS is Mac OS X, although his favorite piece of hardware is a Dell?!?
]{
While I enjoy using SSH and whatnot, almost all of the Microsoft GUI admin tools have remote capabilities, work with secure NTLM authentication and are generally very nice. Anything you can't do with a tool you can do with WMI and a script. Sometimes I wish Linux and BSD had something that approaches WMI =(
Clinging to the old tried and true is not always better. Microsoft has been working hard to make their tools better, and if Server 2003 is any indication they're well on their way.
BTW, "M$" and "Windoze" make you look dumb. Might want to tone down that a bit.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the mindset of someone who actually writes things like this. I thought you guys finally died off with comp.os.linux.advocacy, but I guess I was wrong.
Nothing personal mate, but people like you are to free software advocacy what lolcats are to humour. Mildly amusing but painfully annoying in the end and of no use whatsoever.
since MS support is really very, very bad
I have a live version of Kubuntu running on a machine downstairs. I could install the live version to test that hardware, network compatibility and that it could find the shared network printer and backup drives. It didn't cost anything and the few minor problems resolved online. Actually, there weren't any problems, all I had to look up were some installation instructions. Didn't need to buy anything, call anyone, wait for anything. Tomorrow I can install it if everything else checks out. What risk am I taking adding that OS to my network?
Microsoft support, like Dell's support, used to be THE reason to stay with Windows on Dell hardware. But lately they've both let their support slide. There's no reason to stay with them. There's no risk trying Linux. You can test everything before committing. And it doesn't cost...how much are MSFT service calls going for these days?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
the author says SUSE is not ready for the enterprise. While I do agree with him, I would have to say that Windows is certainly even less ready. I have to use XP at work, and damn, I would never use Windows at any business I ran.
I work in a department of more than 1000 users, I'm low on the ladder, but I'm also one of a very few that is comfortable with a *nix environment. Having said that, all you state here is that your predecessor already solved your problem with Active Directory. A Linux or Mac administrator (unless s/he's worthless) would not deploy these machines without being capable of managing them. Therefore I will inherit my solution from my predecessor also, probably something along the lines of a shell script that sits on the server that I can change when I want. Including doing things like logging in to the client installing software as root and other such niceties. If the people on the laptops aren't on the VPN much though I really don't see how you are ever going to access them on a Windows network. On Linux and OSX you can write a script that runs when connected to the Internet accesses a password protected encrypted web page, revealing a copy of a script to run locally, then run that script locally. This is something Windows users fail to understand. Things that are special in a Windows environment are often trivial in a *nix environment often times so trivial that *nix users don't think about it until they need to solve the problem. Of course Vista is coming out with a new and improved scripting environment.
I'm trying desperately to get our small hospital off of XP.
Then we both agree with Halamka that Windoze is suitable for neither critical systems nor desktops in a hospital. That was my point, so you might want to work on your own reading comprehension skills, coldwetdog
I'll go a step further and say that Windoze is an accident waiting to happen, however you use it. It's surprising how annoying a botnet can be on your network and how such non critical systems, like the door opener to surgery, can be painful when the network is congested by it.
I'll also point you here where I note that GE's new CT uses Red Hat. It's not the average PC under the hood because it's very fast at what it does, but that's not so far fetched.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Here we have a study buy a highly technical CIO that claims that SUSE Linux is an acceptable enterprise OS. This is bunk. Any solid technical person can use any OS and make it work.
Show me a study where a non-technical standard business user is successfully using SUSE for 30 days as their only OS, and suddenly you got my interest.
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka .... Come on everyone, it's getting better as you keep saying it.
...
Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka Halamka
No shit, Sherlock...
Isn't this issue rather backward: in the enterprise communitity, you take what software you need to get the job done, and use the OS that SW is implemented on. And you really don't need stuff like Totem or Banshee, do you?
After playing around with Novell's OES I have come to the conclusion that nothing really has changed. It may be using a linux structure now. But there is virtually no difference between Novell of the past and the Novell of the present. Its just window dressing.
Heh.
Well, I think it depends a lot on what you run.
I had a MSW2k box that ran well enough when I was using it for php dev a couple of years. Dual-booted freebsd on the box. Had to make sure I cut the MSW2k partitions first and keep the MSW2k partitioning tools away from the desk after I cut the freebsd slices, though. MS's tools would kill the freebsd partitions pretty quickly. I think I even managed to have multiple user accounts on it so I could be running a non-admin user when I went to the web looking for answers.
But the non-admin user was running an English locale.
Different job, different box. I think it was MSWxp. I needed to be in Japanese locale when I hit the web. (I forget why.) I set up a user account to run in Japanese locale, logged out and back in, and wasted a day trying to get the account unfrozen. Logging into that account would freeze the box. I couldn't even get it switched back to English locale. Fortunately, I hadn't saved anything important in that account.
What did my co-workers do when they hit the web? I asked. They looked at me with wide eyes and asked why bother making non-admin accounts? Malware? It wasn't such a problem back then, if you were careful where you visited. Otherwise, they wiped the OS on some machines regularly.
My solution? I would re-boot in Linux when I needed to hit the web in Japanese locale. (Again, I was careful not to touch the partitions with MS's tools after the Linux primary partition was cut.) Ultimately got a dedicated Linux box (and a Mac Mini a little later).
So, yeah, Microsoft Windows OS is table.
But I'm much more productive on anything else.
Suse dropped the ball for 10.2. The software management and update stuff is slow in 10.0. But in 10.2 it is extremely slow. I don't know about 10.1 (seems the suse support people claim 10.2 is an improvement over 10.1, and they are aware of the problem - this was when I submitted a bug to complain).
Maybe 10.3 will be better. But I suggest a test drive first.
I have no idea what they are doing that requires the software mgmt/update stuff to be so slow. I turned off their ZMD (Zen/Enterprise) crap and it's still slower. apt is magnitudes faster (we run apt to update stuff on our suse 10.2 servers).
That said, other than that, 10.2 is not bad (except I prefer the classic KDE, vs the "Vista style" KDE which 10.2 defaults to - you can switch it by right clicking). I think suse makes a decent linux desktop.
But, suse better make the software update and management stuff FASTER.
"Most well known for being the responsible guy for one of the biggest hospital IT failures on the books"
Yea, and he was personally responciple for the outage, not.
"On that date, a researcher at the hospital who was sharing data with colleagues inadvertently flooded the network with large quantities of data, causing it to slow drastically"
"The problem had to do with a system called spanning tree protocol, which finds the most efficient way to move information through the network and blocks alternate routes to prevent data from getting stuck in a loop"
was: Re:Why listen to this guy?
davecb5620@gmail.com
"It feels well-integrated and well-supported enough to be used in selected circumstances in my organization, but I don't know enough about the remote management tools and capabilities for it"
"He would consider running Novell SUSE on kiosks used exclusively for browsing the Web in CareGroup's hospitals. He also thinks it would be fine for early adopters of new technology who are willing to adapt to slightly different user interfaces and experiences"
His conclusion? Its NOT ready... (Score:4, Informative)
davecb5620@gmail.com
"Show me a study where a non-technical standard business user is successfully using SUSE for 30 days as their only OS, and suddenly you got my interest"
I've sat non-technical Windows user down in front of this dual boot Win/SuSE/KDE box and they can't tell the difference. Start menu, browser, word processer, email, media player, they can't tell the difference.
was: Re:This Article Is Heavily Flawed
davecb5620@gmail.com
C'mon a CIOs opinion of a desktop is as valid, or trite as anyone else's. Why?
CIOs have support staffs, you do not.
A desktop is not a server or an enterprise it's a desktop in the enterprise.
This is silly. Are we going to read CIO reviews of corporate caterers too?
I wish I had mod points myself right now.
[spoiler]
Lunix is not ready for the desktop.
[/spoiler]
On Linux and OSX you can write a script that runs when connected to the Internet accesses a password protected encrypted web page, revealing a copy of a script to run locally, then run that script locally.
Any pointers here ? Or do I hear the usual WYO (Write Your Own) ? If the latter was the case, your contribution doesn't help very much at solving the problem of Adam (John Halamka).
All we run are the above "productivity" apps and a bizarre VT100 terminal program that talks to the billing / order entry / lab system. Any reasonable Linux system would be fine except that company that runs the back end system won't allow anything but this oddball emulator to talk to their system.
If it is really just a VT-100 emulator, how can their back end differentiate between their oddball program and minicom?Bring back Sirius Punk!
Now that Novell got officially 0wned by Microsoft (okay, so Novell gave up the farm, work with me here) you gotta think they'll put a stop to such propaganda.
"Vista is not considered suitable, the cost is huge per seat, and they figure that as long as they are retraining the workforce to use something, it might as well be something that is cheaper, more secure, and more reliable." - by NeverVotedBush (1041088) on Sunday June 24, @12:24AM (#19625447)
For reliability?
See my subject line, and some data about Windows Server 2003 & SQLServer 2005 (history of 0 vulnerabilities so far @ SECUNIA.COM for its ENTIRE lifetime now) & they run NASDAQ 24x7, 365 days a year, stable as titanium steel/solid as a rock (with the fabled "5 9's" of reliability 99.999 uptime).
For security??
See this data (it takes some doing, 1 hour of work tops for experienced users & a bit more for those less experienced, but an excuse to be MORE experienced in the doing of it, if they want to learn: Want to get a job done RIGHT? Do it, yourself, in other words), & it can be applied to ANY Windows OS of modern variety (2000 even, & XP too, in the majority of its points):
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=365 996#post365996
& the score it gains on CIS Tool 1.x:
http://img.techpowerup.org/070618/APK14SecurityPoi ntsCISToolResult84735.jpg
It can & DOES far surpass VISTA's score "oem/out-of-the-box-stock" as it is setup by MS, & yes, even patched... with about 1 hour's worth of work on an experienced user's part!
Even Linux folks agreed with me (god forbid, lol), that my 14 points for securing Windows (has one small omission, the use of regedit.exe, part of CIS Tool's suggestions) works, here:
http://linux.sys-con.com/read/382946_f.htm
And, when I challenged ANYONE there to exceed my score using CIS Tool 1.x (84.735)!
It appears that nobody tried to (or possibly they did, but could not. I say that, because many suggested BSD instead. So, that said? I posted in the BSD post there the other day (PC-BSD related, here @ slashdot, by arstechnica news reporters)!
Yet again, the same challenge to slashdotters - NO takers, again! Evasions? POSSIBLY!
- or, possibly they don't care about security online!
(OR, that my post was buried in the deluge of posts here @ slashdot (imo @ least, the boards here are difficult to see all users points/posts imo, the only weakness here: The posters that come here though, like Bruce Perens, John Carmack (& others I RESPECT IMMENSELY for their accomplishments though)))
Anyhow/anyways - nobody taking my challenge or beating my score from the *NIX world on a test that runs on ALL platforms (thus, it is the "scientific method of control", the same test on all systems OS types this tool runs on)?
This only shows myself, & the planet, that all this "Windows is less secure than *NIX" is pure b.s., & all of them (yes, even BSD derivants like MacOS X etc. et al) out of the box stock, have holes or room for improvements (especially in terms of security & holes/vulnerabilities).
Still, anyone care to download & try CIS Tool 1.x (from the CENTER FOR INTERNET SECURITY), & exceed my score in the graphic above (84.735) from the *NIX world?
Here is its download (it is MULTI-PLATFORM, & runs on BSD (no MacOS X version though sorry), Linux, Solaris, & Windows):
http://www.cisecurity.org/index.html
Go for it, & good luck!
(I hope you *NIX (or windows guys too) CAN exceed my score, because I will ask how, & attempt to emulate this on Windows Server 2003 SP #2 fully patched, to get even stronger IF it is doable... &, we ALL can learn/grow & GAIN by such a test!)
Thanks!
APK
P.S.=> I can be reached @ apk4776239@hotmai
I don't, I won't be caught dead using anything that has signed with the devil. Sellout wankers, they make me puke, STILL. Nobody give me that openSUSE is ok crap, it's the testbed for the sellouts. I can't say %$&# you Novell enough.
Will Linux ever mature? I hope so because I really don't want a Mac. =l
Take your pick of one or two
1
or
2
Once you do either of those you won't be pooping your fucking pants again and we won't have to put up with stupid little fucktarded bitches like you again.
The herd is already thin enough.
IT people in big corps know that the gem in town is Red Hat, SuSE and perhaps Mandriva or Ubuntu depending on the situation.
Smaller companies that will provide their own in house support can opt for Debian or perhaps Slackware.
Anybody else should be free to try anything that is being produced, but it is a false economy not to have options. The last thing I want to see is freedom of choice killed in Linux.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Patching is a nightmare of unintended consequences, the GUI is very often on the way of what the machines hould be really doing.
Bizarre dependencies.
Applications locking up the machine.
Sorry, but that just does not happen in Linux and UNIX land.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.