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Linux on the Desktop Doubles in 2007
00_NOP writes "According to a report on Softpedia, citing Net Applications, Linux usage on the desktop doubled in 2006 — 07: though from a miserable 0.37% to a still not brilliant 0.81%. Given that Linux is free, is based on peer reviewed source (and so inherently more secure in the longer term) and that hardware support is now pretty good, how long are we going to have to wait for the big breakthrough?" Of course the focus of the article is that Vista is kicking butt over Mac/Linux, which is not particularly surprising.
I used to develop a GPL app, the GNUstep-based character map Charmap. It had a few dozen users, and I'm pretty sure none of them ever took a single look at the source. Only the very biggest applications get attention, and very often quite uncritical examination at that.
... now we have 2 installations :)
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
So in retrospective 2007 was the year of Linux on the desktop? How could I have missed that.. damn!
It's funny - the reasons Linux people use to convince Windows users to switch are the same reasons that Linux people should switch to FreeBSD. They never do because it's too hard. Irony of ironies.
Why can't Linux be more like OS X? If the open-source development model is so great, why did it take Apple a couple of years to do what Linux has failed to do for almost 15 years?
Maybe the open-source development model isn't the panacea that some would like us to think it is.
(please don't bother pointing out that OS X is based on BSD)
People talk about there being a breakthrough, but no one has ever defined what that is. How will we know when it happens?
It's hot on the tail of RC Cola!
True.
And further more businesses are afraid of all this RMS preaching stuff. They just want good stable software without all bs religion around it.
Try again, that's a 5.2% increase in a month...after more than doubling in the previous year. That is huge. If adoption doubled every year as a percentage of the marketplace, Linux would have 100% of the market within 7 years.
Hey Softpedia...I'll give you $100 a day for a month, if you give me 1 cent on the first day of the month, 2 cents on the second day, and so on, doubling the amount each day for the 30 days.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
When netcraft confirms Windows is dead?
Linux will always be a niche player on the desktop. OSS wont have an opportunity to be huge until there is a truly monumental shift in the way we use personal computers. I think all the work on Linux, and the lessons learned now about closed source and the negative impact it has will go a long way in helping open code to really have a chance at that point.
And maybe after that big shift, the big OSS player will have roots or ties to linux, but it wont be the linux we know now.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Background: I am a sysadmin for a 300+ node Linux shop, and have fairly lengthy experience in Solaris, Windows, and AIX as well.
I still run Windows XP as my desktop of choice. I only run it because it came with the laptop that was provided to me by IT, or I would probably still be running Windows 2000. Very simply, I use the OS as a tool to get my job done, and Windows 2000 was doing the trick. Windows XP is now doing the trick. When there is something I want to do that Windows XP can no longer do, I will look beyond. If Linux starts to pioneer in new features and areas that Windows and the Mac OS cannot answer, then I will certainly consider it for my desktop OS. Meanwhile, I deal enough headaches from users at the server level that I don't feel like battling with my Linux wifi drivers, sound card strangeness, or having to jump through other hurdles to just stay productive. Of course there are patches and ways around most/all of the issues I have seen, but that doesn't mean its acceptable to me.
Now, cue over to the server arena, and Linux is certainly replacing Windows boxes for all standard day-to-day servers. It does what I need, it does it well, and even offers features and ease of use that the Windows boxes simply cannot match. That was a compelling reason, with cost also being a close secondary, that we now run so many nodes.
Meanwhile, who really cares. If _XXXX_ does what you want, use it.
I have my new and old machine dual boot linux, and take a bootable DVD with me if people ask for computer help (usually to fix Windows). So that's 2 1/2 more installs.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
"Market share" only counts MONEY, not "free" installs. If I download ubuntu and install it on my laptop, how do they know? They don't - and they don't care, because there are no beans for the bean counters to count.
Likewise, bootleg installs. I have not yet had a single person seriously inquire about "upgrading" to vista. Many people have, however, brought in spanking new machines to be retrograded - either XP or linux. Many more come in with Vista licenses on the box and unregistered XP installs on the hd.
emachines, gateway and all are now shipping with vista and yet the users are still screaming abou tit and doing everything they can to undo the damage. These folks can spin numbers all they like, real world surveys provide ample proof of the suckitude of vista.
I work with Oracle running on AIX. I was given a Windows laptop for work. I got really tired of all the crap I had to do to simply work with my servers. I scrounged up an old optiplex and installed Linux on it. Work is so much easier for me now. The windows laptop sits on the side - I don't really need it any more.
If I'm off site - the wi-fi thing is an issue. But at work, windows really gets in the way of productivity.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
that Linux is practically non-existent on the desktop. I say who are you softpedia? An encyclopedia of free software downloads you say? For linux too? Really, well we have apt-get, emerge, etc. No wonder your statistics suck.
Shitty website, low quality news. Just as an example, the same site has a different article that doesn't favor Vista: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Vista-Is-Nothing-Compared-to-XP-Move-to-Mac-OS-X-and-Ubuntu-Linux-65786.shtml
Excellent, and my point exactly! You found the tool that works best for you. And to come back to the topic question, do you feel a genuine concern over why others don't do the exact same thing or for some big breakthrough?
Not to surpassing, the fact that people upgrade their computers, they will get the latest version of the OS.
Being that the average turn around for computers a new computer every 5 years. About now we would expect Vista
to be double what TFA said Vista is. Vista Right now should have close to 14%, not approaching 8%. Anyone who think
Vista will not be a leading OS is hopeless lost in the realm of Fanboyism. But what the data does show that Visa is not
growing at a rate that would statically be at. But looking at the Data... Somewhat distorted by the fact the graph has
Power PC OS X and Intel OS X as different OS (Keeping the Market share artificially lowered where combined it would be just
under Vista). Seriously the path to least resistance would be buy a new computer, with the latest OS, and use that OS that
comes with the computer no matter if you like it or not. Macs are only one platform while Windows and Linux allows you to
choose your hardware. If you switch to Linux it is the path of most resistance, Still unpolished compared to XP/Vista OS X.
Requiring you to install the OS separately, for only a couple of Major advantages (Security mostly), at the cost of loosing support for most of
your products and services, less software availability, Websites that don't work, and joining a user community who is notoriously unhelpful
towards people who just started, tricking them to deleting their drives and other things. So yes people will stick with XP/Vista if they are that
annoyed they may switch to a Mac, if their budget allows them too (with Macs having no Low End equivalent), otherwise they will just stick
to what they know. Most people really don't care about the politics they just want to get the stuff done.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Here is the problem: you can't convince people that "Peer reviewed source, therefore more security, and oh it's free" is a good reason to switch to Linux.
Most people don't understand what peer reviewed source means, have no idea of the security of their PC (and not a care in the world anyway if they can just drop a virus checker on it and "solve" it) and, Windows and MacOS came with their system anyway, so are ostensibly free.
Linux has to actually expose a feature people want and do it so that it increases productivity and feels better than Windows or MacOS X. There was a podcast on The Register the other week with Mark Shuttleworth - the basic premise of part of it was that Compiz is cool, but useless, and it's the hope that enabling it by default means developers will turn it from a cool whizzy 3D smooth suave thing into something that improves user's experience, and their lives.
And that's why MacOS X and Windows win, because MacOS has Genie Effects (this is the carrot) but it also has Spotlight, and iTunes, and iPhoto, and Quicktime, and all the other stuff people want and need every day (this is the stick). Where MacOS has a soft, warm and inviting stick, brandished by a really hot chick in leather and a penchant for candle wax, Linux's stick has a poo on the end, and is brandished by a 300lb atheist liberal.
It's used by people who can respect and work around and with it's security. If it hits the mass market you can bet it'll be as helpful as the UAC on vista. That inherent security is dependent on the users.
Don't forget that the stats for Vista include all those PCs sold with Vista where the buyer had no choice. If you were to limit the samplings to only the cases where the buyer had a genuine choice of OS, including no pressure by the sales people to go with one over another, then the stats might mean something about market preference. Even if it was just a choice between Vista and XP, then the stats would at least be indicative of the true preferance of the market for a particuler version of Windows. Instead, what these stats tell us is more about the financial benefits to Microsoft and Apple (or the lack thereof in the latter case), since this is based on actual sales (however it is coerced), rather than actual choice.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
I love the application manager, I love the ability to switch desktop workspaces, I love how I can update everything from one spot.
However, one thing has kept XP on my system (dual-boot)-- drivers. I can't find drivers for my printer (Lexmark x7350), or newer ones for my webcam (Logitech Quickcam Communicate STX). I can't use my printer at all, and my webcam is using some way old drivers and is very blurry-- looks much better with the newer ones on XP. I've looked around, but not found anything to help me out... and I'm not even close to being talented enough to write my own.
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
The day MS releases Office for Linux is the day that will happen. Which I figure will be never. I'm certain the only reason that MS doesn't offer Access with Office for the Mac is specifically because they want to provide barriers for Apple in the business market. If MS had been split into OS and applications companies, there might be some chance of that port getting done. But not the way things stand now.
No - I don't feel a concern about people doing things the way I do. I would like to see greater adoption of linux so that some of the issues you've brought up are more likely to be resolved more quickly.
At the same time I do feel a level of concern when Linux is presented as being incapable of being productive, especially in an environment where it has such great advantages, like a shop using Unix, Linux or some other *nix. I'm wracking my brain trying to think up a scenario where that really makes sense.
If I want to surf the web over the free wireless at Panera and watch a dvd - I can see some advantages to windows. If I were working in an all windows environment I could see some possible advantages. But as an admin in a non-windows environment, I can't see what windows brings to the table that is meaningful.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
...business people usually do not look at the base but at the rate of growth... Linux' increase is 100%, Vista increase is 7.4 % clearly the winner here is Linux...
oh, and the potential market for Linux is very big... the potential new market for Windows is very small since they already do have almost the whole market.
What is the error here? I wonder if .4 or .8 percent are both essentially zero in the context of measurement accuracy.
However most IT people I know have a linux box or two in addition to the Windows boxes that they have bought and use for their main office-type work. I imagine a poll like this would not have captured those.
In the end though Linux and Apple are missing a huge window of opportunity - Microsoft has rarely been so vulnerable as they have been in the last year with this botched release of Vista. You can be sure they are aware of it and are closing that window as fast as they can.
Because the market itself is growing very fast. Even if the market share for Linux on the desktop would remain the same it would mean lots more Linux desktops out there.
;-)
Also have you considered that 0.81% is more than twice as much as 0.37%? If Linux on the desktop can keep up that growth rate another 5 to 7 years it will end up at more than 120% market share
That more .Net apps are run on Windows than other platforms?
When my wireless isn't working, my delete key does weird unexpected things, and there is the most offensively named program ever (The GIMP), I can take solace in the fact that my operating system source is peer reviewed.
We'll get there. And when we do, it's because we have the better product.
We already have that you say?
Well, I am inclined to agree, but we are willing to learn something new, to tinker with it, make it our own. The same cannot be said about the rest. They will come around eventually.
Gamers! This is the group we should capture. Compiz candy, working drivers and a finished Wine that works with whatever game they want to play. Needless to say that the potential for improvement is evident.
With doubling every 12 month, Linux should take the market in 7 years with 103.68% desktop share (you can have more than one desktop per person, right?). Hey, what do you mean it's not a valid application of Moore's law, which is no law?!
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They do try to illustrate the idea that people have migrated from XP to Vista but the rate is pretty damned poor. I wonder where they are getting their data and if any of it reflects new PC purchases? I particularly like the way they throw about words like "Loyalty to the Windows brand." People don't use computers out of loyalty. Many, if not most, were initially pushed or forced into it in some way... at least where professional use is concerned. And the human reality from that point on is not "which to choose" but rather "to change or not to change" and 'not changing' is what we all find to be the easier solution. It's human nature... and it takes an angry human to choose change over staying the same. Looking at the numbers, I'd say it indicates a growing force of angry Windows users out there.
Their article, and to a greater extent the inflammatory Slashdot article, incorrectly portray these statistics as some universal truth handed down from the gods. In fact, if you look at the article, you'll see that they're merely talking about their own browser user-agent statistics. In other words, they pulled them out of their ass last time they stuck their head up there (perpetually about one minute ago according to the site).
Ubuntu is king of the Linux desktop, and Ubuntu users get the vast majority of their software through Synaptic, a genius piece of software which if introduced in Windows would put "Softpedia" out of business within a year. In fact, I can't think of any reason for a user of any major Linux distribution to need anything from "Softpedia's" website. We have our own more community-centric sources in every case.
Fuck Softpedia.
I tried to install Kubuntu on the striped drives of my windows xp box in a dual boot configuration, but linux didn't see the stripe. Turned out it doesn't recognize SATA drives that are striped on windows installs. Many searches on the web for the solution kept saying how SATA raid is not REAL raid so why not use Linux's built in software raid. Because I have windows on their and want to dual boot since I need the windows install for several things. And to me when it runs on windows when I start the machine, it is a 'real' raid. It is a very common configuration. I found out that there is some method to make it work but like many of these situations in the Linux world it is too much of a pain in the ass for me to bother with any more. At one time I had the energy to do this. Not any more. I am more like John Q Public. I just want to use the tool that is my computer. I no longer want to build it. Windows XP works fine for me on this box... it is my only dual core machine and the one I want to use the most as it is fastest.
So not to totally give up, I installed Kubuntu on the machine my xp box replaced. Still a pretty good, though single core machine... with no striped drives. It installed nicely, except that I could use my wireless card. A Linksys (I don't want to hear about what I should have bought... I can go to any damn computer store and buy a Linksys, it is a market leader. Those are the cards that should 'just work' when you install them... the market leaders). I use WPA encryption because it is the more secure choice. Except I find out that wireless encryption in Linux 'is like a box of chocolates', you never know what you are going to get. Except that the box of chocolates are always edible, and Linux it seems has a huge problem digesting WPA encryption without have to read half a dozen 'how-to's and again spend hour building the tool. I caved in and hard wired it to the router.
I like the idea of Linux. I like the idea of someone pushing a thorn in the side of monopolies. I have had, and continue to have Linux installed on at least one machine at home for something like 7 or 8 years now. And I do use it for certain tasks... usually programming related. But I am older and just would like to use the tool and not have to build it every time something changes. Especially with important items like disk striping and wireless. I am sure that it is this sentiment that keeps it at less than 1% of the market. How about less 3D desktop frills, as cool as it is, and more functional stuff like being able to use WPA encryption on my wireless card, or recognizing my windows striped raid when I want to set up a dual boot install.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
There's like -200- people using it now?
Yep, at least that many at Microsoft have a Linux desktop.
I'm sure a downloaded/compiled Linux wasn't counted anywhere.
While a pre-installed Windows which was quickly erased was counted.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
most users are not computer geeks who have time to install/learn/ test drive/reinstall operating systems for fun. For instance, my wife is a biology professor who uses a Mac. There is something seriously wrong with her Mac Book. There is a perceptible 0.5 sec. lag between when a key is hit before it appears on the screen. However, it STILL works good enough for her that she doesn't want to reinstall OS X, because that will lead to down time. (it would drive me insane, but she is a slow typer so it doesn't affect her). She is a smart person obviously and given enough time she probably could learn to run a Linux laptop (e.g. Ubuntu), but why would she want to do that? It would be counterproductive. She already has a laptop that does everything she wants.
:) granted I haven't looked at Linux in a few years but back when I tried it, the learning curve was way too steep. I gave up and went back to XP so I could get work done instead of trying to configure the X server to work right with a scrolling touchpad.
I use Windows XP because I hate Macs, but I hate Windows slightly less
For most people, there is nothing wrong with Windows and Mac OS. They may be crappy/non-free operating systems, but they're usually good enough to get some job done.
NO CARRIER
Whenever i see discussions like this i always think to myself, "look to the past". (I use the word linux here alot, but in reality i mean a whole host of things like apache and mysql, etc).
If you go back and look at the past, you may see the future spelled out for you.
The one known constant in the software industry so far has been almost-0 innovation from MS except in the area of the user interface. Everything they've done has been driven by someone coming up with an idea, MS taking it, putting a more usable UI on it and then (ab)using the market to kill off competition.
But go back not too far and you'll see linux as the dominant player in the (small-fry) server game with MS playing a very big role of catch-up. Linux didn't have the desktop by any stretch of the imagination and MS was simply in the right place at the right time. So they (ab)used their desktop dominance to steal the server role. But it doesn't really change much. MS still doesn't inovate. MS Live is a good example of that.
These days, linux is playing a catch-up game with the UI and its going to be a slow game, but i really dont think its a game MS can win in the long run given their lack on innovation. I dont think there will every be a big break through, but we've already seen a few medium sized ones. People are shipping linux as a desktop OS on blackbox computers and thats a huge step like it or not and it can only get better with time.
But the point im trying to make is linux does innovate significantly (or at least, the players in the OSS industry). What you can do with linux on a server still far out-paces MS in many many ways in terms of functionality if not in terms of usability.
But that will change.
Apple will always be a bit-player tho, they're a hardware producer and they might as well stop producing an OS and start spending their efforts doing something useful (though they really dont seem to understand that at all which is a shame).
This year we picked up a couple new laptops. Needless to say they count as Vista. There wasn't much else on the shelf pre-configured with the manufacture's warranty. On the other hand, my Core 2 Duo homebuilt and the converted PIII and P4 machines are probably not reported and counted properly.
Just how are they counting the Linux installations. I hope it isn't just from browser User Agent strings, or from sales figures of new hardware. If Linux is such a small showing, then why is VMware stock doing so well? Somebody is interested in it.
The truth shall set you free!
This is a copy/paste troll, don't feed the trolls.
My Babylon
...here is that MS Vista GETS bundled with OEM machines. Users who don't know better just get it, and in most cases think a computer is MS Windows (sad state of affairs really - shows the real level of intelligence of the average person).
If a GNU/Linux distro was bundled with the machine, the user still wouldn't know any difference, but GNU/Linux sales(whatever they are!?)) would be up.
Fortunately moves are being made to stop the 'bundle MS' (i.e. MS Windows tax) with new computers, and allow the purchaser to select an OS. That at least makes them aware that at least there is far superior OS than the MS offerings.
I thought Vista was a huge butt by itself, with multiple orifices !
Vista doesn't have any 'feet' to even outpace XP... this news is surprising.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Linux doesn't have fear on its side. There is not nor have there ever been choice in computers. What keeps people using Windows is what will happen if they stop. I for example, against my will will have to install a Windows Server 2003 machine in a VM because my university Class requires it, otherwise, the teacher will fail me. (There are certain assignments I can get by on with Linux, but maybe one or two where he has INSISTED on seeing screenshots of a Windows Desktop, as for Application.
Right now, in peoples minds, the fear exists that if they use Linux they will most fail and if they use Windows there is no way they can fail. Until Linux has the applications nessessary to hold users by that iron gauntlet of fear, Windows will hold people in its Iron Gauntlet of fear. People love Linux, but they don't fear it because Windows is there. We need to be loved and feared.
By the way.
To those who say Linux has no productive applications. I did this in Cinelerra just yesterday. I find I'm terrible at Cinematography. I made a Youtube Video about a Linux game called FreeDroid RPG, but this is the first time I have ever done anything for youtube. I plan on re-uploading it later. but just keep in mind. I did this with Linux programs on Linux for a Linuix program, with a functional Linux capture card.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUCY9cu3eac
There you go.
But the point is also that he had a choice, many people have no choice at all, and the people taking their choice away have never (or often arent equipped to) evaluated all their options objectively.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The problem is that Windows has made the entire segment too homogenous. People are expected to be able to read MS Office documents, visit IE-only websites and install programs (particularly drivers) that only work under Windows, and that is troubling me in my usage of Linux and FreeBSD. Maybe not in my everyday usage, but certainly far from never.
Therefore, I don't really care if people start using my operating system(s) of choice, but I do rather much care that they stop using Windows. I couldn't really care less if what they switch is Linux, Solaris, AIX, OSX, Plan9 or Unununium, all I care about is that Windows usage drops to, say, 50% or so, where not only other people, but even Microsoft themselves will recognize that it is important to start following standards for information exchange, and for hardware developers to recognize that it is important to release specifications rather than just Windows-only drivers (anyone remember the days of old when you'd always get a protocol reference with a printer or modem?).
I have no doubt that Microsoft will last for at least a decade, and I don't really care if they stay in the market forever, but I really don't think it is impossible to achieve heterogeneity within a year or two.
From the article post:
"(and so inherently more secure in the longer term)" - Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday October 07, @09:03AM, 00_NOP writes WINDOWS SERVER 2003 (ENTERPRISE):
http://secunia.com/product/1174/
Affected By 135 Secunia advisories
Unpatched 8% (11 of 135 Secunia advisories)
----
IIS 6:
http://secunia.com/product/1438/
Affected By 3 Secunia advisories
Unpatched 0% (0 of 3 Secunia advisories)
----
SQLServer 2005:
http://secunia.com/product/6782/
Affected By 0 Secunia advisories
Unpatched 0% (0 of 0 Secunia advisories)
====
vs.
====
http://secunia.com/product/2719
Affected By 132 Secunia advisories
Unpatched 10% (13 of 132 Secunia advisories)
(That's JUST THE KERNEL, & not including possible shell/usercode portions)
----
Apache 2.2x:
http://secunia.com/product/9633
Affected By 5 Secunia advisories
Unpatched 20% (1 of 5 Secunia advisories)
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE linux and just can't stand windows (am using it now because I am upgrading my Linux machine with a complete new set of HD's and even I am not hardcore enough to read slashdot from links). Why can't I stand windows you ask? Because it is a black box and it never tells me what is wrong or what it is doing or why it is has frozen this time for no good reason and how the hell can you crash on a fresh install straight from the factory you worthless piece of shit.
Anyway, Linux being great and all suffers from the fact that someone needs to write drivers for it, this means that the best drivers for it will either be written by people that want those drivers for themselves, have a burning desire to get people to use linux OR want their product to work with linux.
Some companies don't give a shit and driver coders tend to stay away from products from those companies.
Simply put, how the hell am I supposed to write a driver for a product I don't have the specs for and that I will never buy on my own? (Even if I should want too).
The greatest thing that a linux advocate might do is present a simple list with supported products. NOT supported chipsets, simply a list with product numbers and a rating (Does not work, works for some, works most likely, if you can't get this to work you should run for US president).
Linux has some excellent support for printers BUT notall printers, same with webcams. The problem is that there are TONS of them, all sligtly different and who has time to write drivers for them all.
Next time, read some reviews first, you might be suprised, the best products out there, are also the most likely to have linux support, either by the company OR from the community. The last is obvious, the better the product, the more likely a linux code is to buy it.
I can't help you out, just remember this, the exact same thing happens to you when you upgrade to the latest windows release, except that upgrading linux (and all the other software you on linux) is free, and MS charges you several hundred dollars for the pleasure.
For now, just wait, it seems you are not alone with this particulair model (google says so) so sooner or later someone might figure it out.
Given that Linux is free, is based on peer reviewed source (and so inherently more secure in the longer term) and that hardware support is now pretty good, how long are we going to have to wait for the big breakthrough?"
What is holding Linux back from massive adoption is software. Very simply, it's just not as good as the proprietary stuff found on Mac/Win. This is NOT to say that the stuf on Linux is BAD, but it's just not equivalent. OpenOffice is very very good. But not as good as MSOffice. GIMP is very good. But not as good as Photoshop. And so on down the line.
The strength of Linux and FOS is also its weakness - having a volunteer developer army. Herding cats isn't as effective if you don't have a big sack of kitty kibble for incentive, or the ability to cut off the kitty kibble as a goad.
Perhaps this will change a bit now that China's getting more involved with Linux - perhaps they can come up with dead-solid apps that are absolutely equal to, or even exceed the abilities of the following applications that are (for me) essential:
1. Photoshop
2. Ilustrator
3. InDesign
4. MSOffice suite
5. FinalCutPro
6. Ableton Live
7. Propellorheads Reason
8. Soundtrack
9. iDVD
10. Flash
11. Dreamweaver
12. Contribute
That's what I use, and I use all of the above, all the time. Some are Windows, some are Mac. I am not a programmer, and I don't have the time to do that. So, it's A: Not My Problem and B: Someone else's job to come up with these apps.
Until the above are developed, I will have little use for Linux.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
... every Linux user installed/tried more distros for fun I've tried PCLinuxOS, Mandriva Spring 2007, RHEL5, FC6, FC7, suse 10.2, Suse 103, Ubuntu 7.04 in this year.
I definitely agree with you on the compatibility piece. I am, actually, very happy with an HP Photosmart 2710 wifi printer that we have, because it, unlike moat, has drivers, and the HP control panel, for Linux. This makes printing so much easier. (The only problem is DHCP... I'll find a way around that eventually.)
See this next:
/. no less for securit data)
HARDENING LINUX POST AT SLASHDOT:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=267599&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20203061
Where over 30++ *NIX variant users (including Ubuntu SeLinux &/or BSD variant users) outright RAN from a legit and valid test of security by the CENTER FOR INTERNET SECURITY & not a single one could exceed my score of 85.185, though they were freely challenged to do so, after NUMEROUS STATEMENTS (like the one in this thread's init. post no less) of:
(Insert *NIX variant here) is more secure OR securable than Windows is"
(By the way - CIS TOOL, the multiplatform test used, based on best practices for each platform & testing analogs that exist between them all, such as ACL/MAC based security on config files & files + folders, password strength & FAR MORE is recognized as legit & valid by BOTH ComputerWorld & SANS, sites often both cited here @
Well, vs. my score on a custom hardened for security Windows Server 2003 of 85.185 (and, I can go higher on my work rig, a custom security hardened Windows XP box, @ 85.536 (which COULD be higher, but our group policies prohibit me from changing some password security related stuff)).
You guys & all your "Pro *NIX variant" propoganda don't look too good.
APK
P.S.=> I am inclined to agree with this gent here:
"I used to develop a GPL app, the GNUstep-based character map Charmap. It had a few dozen users, and I'm pretty sure none of them ever took a single look at the source. Only the very biggest applications get attention, and very often quite uncritical examination at that." - by CRCulver (715279) on Sunday October 07, @09:06AM (#20887233) The numbers above from SECUNIA, & also those from my CIS TOOL multiplatform security test, don't seem to 'bear out the fact' that OpenSource code is more secure... hell, speaking as a professional developer for over 15 years now? It makes it MORE vulnerable to attacks... mainly because it is EASIER to spot bugs in pure sourcecode, than it is from an Assembler language dump in a debugger (used to trace binaries running)... apk
Where do these people get their statistics from?
If I buy a branded PC I buy windows, if I then download and replace windows this doesn't get recorded. All that is recorded is the sale of Windows.
Market share is hard to analyse, I would imagine the Windows share is less than people think, purely because there's so many extraneous Windows licences sold.
So you are telling me, that despite Windows being pushed with every new OEM computer sold, despite Microsoft's inflated "sales" prices, and despite Linux systems obviously not showing up consistently in "market share" numbers, despite people dual booting to play their games... Linux market share still more than DOUBLED last year? Increasing by 0.5 percentage points from 0.31% to 0.8%.
Greater than unity exponential growth rates Redmond! It's the Penguin, and by the looks of it this will be big...
Huh? You aren't IT?
You need your sound card to stay productive managing Linux server nodes?
The truth is that Linux has no "strangeness" problems on the right hardware, just as Vista or XP have no "strangeness" problems on the right hardware. The difference is that your IT people, or whomever they bought your laptop from, picked the hardware and installed the drivers for XP/Vista. If you buy a laptop from a Linux shop with Linux installed, there are no driver issues either. The only difference between XP/Vista and Linux is that your IT staff is ignorant about anything other than XP/Vista. That is what keeps XP/Vista so successful: user and operator ignorance.
The truth is that every desktop (gnome/kde/etc) is far superior and more flexible than XP. I have to use XP a couple times a day and it is like poking myself in the eye with a stick. Interactivity sucks. And sometimes I have to use IE6. What a steaming pile that is!
The parent item is absolutely right. Softpedia has no actual data on Linux installations. The data doesn't exist.
... no XP install disk, so we can't just stick in a new hard drive. I inserted an Ubuntu live CD and she ran with that (no HD) for a month. Worked great! So I installed a $75 hard disk and loaded Linux onto it. It took 30 minutes, no problems, and everything Just Works.
Here are three use cases that would show up as Microsoft customers in any Softpedia data:
My elderly mother finally bought a Vista laptop -- a $400 bargain Toshiba. Very nice dual-core Intel laptop, excellent for the price. Half a gig of RAM rendered Vista unusable. Rather than spend more money, I installed Ubuntu Linux on it, and she's off like a rocket. Everything Just Works.
My mother-in-law's old eMachines desktop blew a hard drive. Oops
My middle daughter just turned 15. For her birthday we gave her a $400 Acer laptop. I put Linux on a partition. By the end of the month I'm confident she'll have abandoned Vista. Too slow, too annoying with its constant security warnings and popups.
(There are only two problems with the Linux setup for her. One is hardware-based. I'd say the installation Just Works except that it doesn't quite; the Atheros wi-fi is broken, and I'll probably have to buy her a d-Link PCMCIA card. The second is the lack of iTunes, and I'll have to introduce her to a DRM-free music store.)
Linux on the desktop is more than viable, and it's installed in a lot more places than "experts" like those at Softpedia know. Even the ditzy kid over at the Wal-Mart electronics section is dual-booting.
Though I know I will be modded down.
People who think Linux costs $0.00 IMHO think their time is worth $0.00
I have used linux off and on for the last 10 years or so. I have yet to encounter an install that worked 100% perfect out of the "box". Some installs were darn close, but I always ended up in strange forums from google searches to try and get some aspect working properly.
I don't see how they can even make a wild guess. I get a free boxed copy of openSUSE from Novell which I always give away and I don't know how many PC's it eventually gets installed on, but I know of 2 for certain. I have Linux installed on 7 PC's at home and 4 for other people. On my PC's I have virtualisation running currently running 6 other distros, total is 19 minimum. If the statistics are based on sales and if Novell counts their box set they send me, statistics says the total I have is one. They say OSX is more widely used, obviously based on sales figures which are traceable by serial number. Novell, RedHat, PCLinuxOS, Freespire, Sabayon, Mandriva, Ubuntu, slackware, gentoo etc. haven't a clue how many boxes their distribution is installed on, but I bet it's many many times their traceable installed base. Aint statistics great at surpassing damn lies - they have to publish something, even if it is totally bogus, as that's how they make their money - just another shed load of nonsense.
My installation of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn a few months back went flawlessly and was very simple. Linux has the install sorted, no need to keep on working on that part okay? It was good 5 years ago. People are obsessed with the install process for some reason.
.gtk-rc file - yeah, that's user friendly. NOT. This is a stupid retarded and backward attitute. I approve of not installing 25 text editors by default, but don't remove options from the one you do provide.
However Flash doesn't work in my browser because I'm running a 4 year old architecture - AMD64, and the creators of Flash haven't deigned to recompile the Linux version for 64-bits. Maybe if Linux had Mac OS X-like Fat Binaries people would be encouraged to create cross-platform binaries, rather than just create a simple IA32 version.
Installing the graphics card drivers was hell. For 4 months the graphics card was not supported in Linux anyway, so I had to run in VESA mode. However nVidia finally decided to release 8600GT drivers for Linux, and I thought "Hooray!". The install was hell. Due to idealogical beliefs that border on religious extremism you can't just install the drivers. Oh no, you have to recompile the kernel headers and then do wizardry. Not a problem for me, although it took some time because for some reason I don't like spending my free personal time doing sysadmin stuff, so I try to avoid it as much as possible. I tried many forms of instructions online, but they were either for a previous version of Ubuntu, or incorrect. After hours of searching, I finally found a tool called Envy. It worked. Many thanks to the author of Envy. I now have desktop effects - some pointless, some useful.
However the system update mechanism now tells me that I have updates available for the kernel headers and other things, and I'm petrified that by installing them all that hard work would be undone. So I'm now ignoring the updates.
Let's not talk about how many configuration options Ubuntu removes from applications like gaim and so on. Want to have a listing with small buddy icons? Well fuck off, we've removed that possibility. Oh, but there's a plugin for editing the
Until there is a Linux distribution that is simple, yet has the power available for those that want it, Linux will not gain a lot on the desktop. There needs to be a mechanism to install essential third-party drivers that is as painless as Mac OS X and Windows.
And just to be sure, it isn't about catching up to Windows any more, it is about catching up to Mac OS X. It just works, it's simple yet powerful, it's a full Unix, it looks nice, the desktop effects are very useful and accessible, and drivers install easily.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
...how long are we going to have to wait...?
.deb, really) in the hope of covering a sufficient user base, while hoping it won't completely break next time some distro upgrades to libwhatever.so.52; or you can try to get your software into the package repositories of all the major distributions (and thus become entirely dependant on the goodwill of each distro for access to your software); or you can try to package the software your own way and hope for the best (that's what Loki did for their games, for instance), which is still vastly suboptimal because it's a lot of additional work for you and you still have no guarantee it'll work well, due to countless issues, the least of which not being that ELF has real, real issues where it comes to binary compatibility. Oh, and yeah, you can also just ship the sources in a tarball, hereby reducing your user base to the demographic of Linux geeks.
.debs | use .rpms | fork your own distro?"
Well, it's something I've been thinking a lot over the last years, and I'd like to share my thinking with you lot:
At this point, I don't think we're going to have a major breakthrough until Linux becomes third-party friendly.
Let me explain.
At the moment, the whole experience of using a Linux distribution is balanced between two parties: the user, and the developers of the distro. Linux distributions in general have come a LONG way in minding the user's convenience, but I am still not sure this will suffice.
Because the success of other platforms (well, Windows, alright) doesn't boil down to user friendliness, I think that much is clear by now. No, what made its success is that it fosters a rich environment of third parties -- entities that are neither the OS maker nor the user, yet benefits both.
Something that is still a long way from penetrating the Linux culture, I think.
At this point, let's imagine you're a third party (and as such, not particularly involved in the Linux world as such -- to you it's just a platform among others) and you wish to ship your software for Linux. What are your options? Well, and that's assuming you're even going to bother trying to figure out the whole mess, you can: try to ship various packages (.rpm and
Compare with Windows: just put the binaries in a ZIP file or an installer. Done.
And let us not mention the issue of drivers. At this point, shipping a driver for Linux, when you're a neutral hardware maker third party, involves either sending the kernel maintainers your code and hope they'll consent to include it in the main kernel tree at some unknown point in the future, or ship some manner of hack that will try to compile your driver against the installed kernel, which will simply not work if the compiler, or even the right kernel headers, aren't already installed. (To be fair, the initiative that was recently spoken of on Slashdot, about some company developing Linux drivers for third parties for free, is interesting and might improve the situation lots.)
In short: when you're a third party, supporting Linux is generally not worth the pain.
This is a very bad situation for us, because we need hardware makers to support our platform, so there isn't an ongoing gap of weeks or months between the release of bleeding edge hardware and its support on Linux, and there is just plain not enough of us to reproduce the functionality of all the software third parties are making for other platforms
Admittedly, projects like Klik and Autopackage are a step in the right direction, but isn't it too little and perhaps even too late? I don't know.
Because the main, the core issue here is not technical.
The core issue is that when you discuss something like Autopackage, the response typically amounts to "Why don't you use
And this, my friends, is why I've lost hopes of seeing the Linux desktop go mainstream.
Hopefully the future will prove me wrong, though.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
> how long are we going to have to wait for the big breakthrough?
Wait till Linux kernel drops the GPL license. It is illegal to develop closed-source drivers by OEMs for Linux as long as Linux is GPLed. Solution is to switch to any BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, PC-BSD, etc), once the numbers rise OEMs will develop drivers for BSDs because there is no legal retrictions to develop drivers for BSDs.
Meaning what was measured and how thoroughly? I would assume this was somehow a statistical count with some sort of extrapolation, however, in all these "stidies" that supposedly yield results to the second decimal point no word is given on the estimated error size. Moreover, even well grounded studies have errors of 3-4%, which means a total range of 6 to 8 percent. Therefore, to quote a usage number of less than one percent and to the second decimal place cannot be creditable. This "study" would require significant degree of observation of the total user population. Moreover, to quote these figures by the month makes the whole spewing of dubious statistics beyond any credence.
I would assume, a small subset of data from a narrowly defined group was then being abstracted where the numbers were analyzed beyond their inherent worth. So why discuss something that is no more than an assertion? We have no knowledge of the sample size, the counting method and finally no idea how these numbers were extrapolated to give a global estimate. Until then, are there not more interesting topics and knowledgeable discussions than this article's content?
i know more people that LIKE linux than LIKE vista
The One Laptop Per Child .. or XO device (http://laptop.org/) runs Linux and will be soon the dominant desktop for children in many parts of the world. I'm fairly sure you'll see far more interesting numbers then .. especially this November with the "get one, give one" program (http://www.xogiving.org/).
That'd be cool: a Christmas gift for Linux: your over 1% now, baby!! Hoot!
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
The reason why I switched, and a lot of other Linux folks several years ago, to Macintosh OSX was I was tired of fighting trying to get hardware to work (I know, not as big of an issue today) and I could use MS Office, Photoshop, Quickbooks, Dreamweaver as well as develop in a UAMP environment. Furthermore I got into video editing which is now dominated by Final Cut in most small/medium sized shops.
Goes back to the chicken and the egg, especially in the business world, that people won't use linux on the desktop until the application support it there. Software publishers aren't going to release Linux apps until the demand is there. My classic example is Maya. A lot of folks in the CGI industry were already on IRIX and Linux has supplanted IRIX in many shops. So there is a version of Maya for Linux. Ditto on the rendering engine for lightwave also runs on Linux for renderfarms. There was a demand for those products on the linux platform. Hell, even Apple has kept the Linux version of Shake around. (Although cheaper to get a Mac and Shake than to buy the Linux version last time I checked)
As far as the "Peer-reviewed" and more secure code. I call bullshit. The great thing about linux is that any one can contribute. The bad thing about Linux is that any one can contribute. That means everyone from professional programmers to 12 year old kids. The theory is that when bugs are found, they can be patched quicker, but I'm not so sure just how much code in the Linux domain is security audited by others. Especially given the sheer number of distros and configs out there. (Another reason why a lot of software developers avoid Linux). The only folks I know that really go through and security audit code are the OpenBSD folks.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Truth is you're correct, all OS installs take some time. Linux for the desktop installs just seem to require more level of effort to work 100%.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I worked at a shop repairing PCs for years. I still have a Windows XP machine here at the house. I've installed every flavor of Windows (except Vista) enough that I call myself expert at it. (In other words, hundreds of installs ranging from reformats to completely new installations on hardware that I just put together.)
I've installed Linux about 8-10 times now over the past 5 or 6 years. When I first started, it -was- painful, even if you knew what you were doing. A couple years ago, I was running Slackware. The last few installs have all been Kubuntu. It is a breeze. Feisty is an absolute pleasure to work with compared to Windows. The hardest part is knowing how to find the software you want to install. Once you learn that, almost everything is in the repository and you just have to tell it to install. A Windows installation generally means I have to scour the internet for drivers and small utilities to bring the system up to usable level, including a decent video player and codecs, a decent text editor, and virus/adware software.
Granted, I don't install the last on Linux because it generally hasn't been necessary, but I know clamav is in the repository as well, so it's covered.
I think you owe it to yourself to try installing (K|X|Ed)Ubuntu and see what a difference a year or 2 has made. I'm not saying you should use the system (I use it, but I'm not trying to force it on others) but just so you know how much less painful the install is, I think you should try installing it.
Gutsy is even going to have Compiz included, and on this box with an Intel GPU, it's amazingly stable. I've only had it crash once in the last couple weeks, and that was when enabling the 'reflections' plugin. The cube flipping and window changing rivals OS X's eyecandy, and it's even got a thing like expose that shows you all the windows at once to pick from.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Linux will always be a niche player on the desktop.
I believe Linux will become the definitive commodity desktop and Windows will gradually be regulated to a niche player and compete with Apple for a limited pool of users with specific software needs. And that commodity desktop will be, largely, the Linux we know today.
Perhaps from the perspective of a gamer your perspective would be true, but when you look across the corporate enterprise it's a different picture. The level of effort to keep a Windows enterprise running in any sort of decent shape is staggering. Running it securely requires a level of effort that borders on the insane and limits user production so severely it sometimes seems the users are serving the machine, ala Metropolis. I have a customer doing...trying to do...that very thing. It's an ongoing disaster that challenges users to find ever more creative ways to skirt the restrictions.
The byzantine license requirements and ever escalating costs merely increase the market pressure to a shift away from pure Microsoft environments.
Never underestimate market pressure. 5 to 7 years ago the economic pressure in the film industry started to shift toward video over film. I remember discussions on video forums there would be a lot of "not in our lifetime" comments about the demise of film. But the film empire in entertainment production has been crumbling ever since at an ever increasing pace. A shift in projection delivery coupled with a push to retrofit film projectors with digital projectors, and you'll see film processing equipment in the museum next to punch card readers.
I think you'll be surprised how fast the sea change can take place. Strangely, I don't think they'll be surprised in Redmond. They see it coming.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Linux will never have a breakthrough on the desktop until it has a killer app that no other system has.
In the server room LAMP is linux's killer app. It's very effective and it is the reason for the majority of linux installs in the server room that I've come across.
Is there such an App for Linux desktop?
It's easy to say that, for most people, Linux would be more than enough. If you want to do email, browse the web and do basic things, then Linux is already excellent at that. But, for most people, the decision to which system to buy, most times, comes down to the unexpected needs that they may have in the future. That's why so far Windows is dominating. If you buy a windows machine, it's most likely to have any software that you MAY need. It's a safety net. Only Windows' extreme security issues have forced people to look at other system. Let me assure you, had windows been nearly as secure as Linux or OS X, people would have never, ever looked for other solutions.
When developers started moving away from the Mac in the 90s, the platform came very close to death. It barely held on to its measly market share because of cheaper Macs in the late 90s-early 2000s.
It wasn't until Apple managed to get Finalcut into great shape and its iLife suite and then OS X; those were things that people wanted/needed. The killer apps make people want/have to use a system.
I know of no such application for Linux on the Desktop.
It seems to me that Mac and Linux users fall into the standard percentage of the population who "gets it" and a huge percentage of windows users just accept it. As long as users have to take action and break out of the mainstream to use something other than MS, the percentages will be low.
Furthermore, already in this discussion there are posters stating exactly the problem with desktop linux:
ahref=http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20887875/rel=url2html-21826http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20887875/>
ahref=http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20887569/rel=url2html-21826http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20887569/>
Sorry, Slashdot URL handling mucked it up -- or likely it was just me :)
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20887875
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20887569
Thanks, i will check it out again
Being able to install and run Linux is not smartness. Being computer savvy is not smartness.
Slashdot readers need to get a perspective of the wider world beyond computers with people who are experts in their fields who are enriching our lives in different ways. A doctor doesn't laugh and act all mighty and superior when you need help, he certainly doesn't expect you to be an expert in medicine before he would deign to treat you or pass snide remarks about your cluelessness. Equating familiarity with computers and Linux with smartness is insular and stupid. Everybody out there is smart enough to learn how to use Linux, its not rocket science, but they have other priorities.
They need a seamless experience, they have work to do. Fiddling with their OS and drivers is not an interesting pastime for them, getting to know the insides of their OS and security and other issues is not a priority. They expect the experts in computers and OSs to get this right so they can use the expertise they have productively. Most times they are not even interested in choosing Linux, Windows or OSX. This is something the experts would do or whatever is there by default to get their work done. Its not a decision that they are particularly concerned about.
"Closed source is negative because it stifles progress..." - by Bert64 (520050) on Sunday October 07, @10:36AM (#20887833) Yea, it stifles progress in spotting bugs... tell us, Bert: How long have you been developing applications on ANY platform, period?
/.'s Pro-NIX crowd here with their statements along the lines of (Insert *NIX variant here) is more secure OR securable than Windows is":
See, I have to ask - because imo & experience (15 yrs. as a professional developer, & many years before that on many platforms besides Microsoft ones (prior to MS' existence period))?
Trace debugging binaries (compiled & linked sourcecode) using assembly language dumps external debuggers provide is FAR more difficult to try to "hack/crack" than it is step tracing thru RAW SOURCE in a compiler's debugger, looking for cracks/hacks to try to pull.
Do you think differently? Do you even HAVE development experience on these levels??
APK
P.S.=> And, then, there is ALWAYS this data too I used here today (& in the past vs.
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20887661
And iirc? You've attempted to dispute that too in the past here... to no avail - I don't see you as being able to dispute the SECUNIA data I provide, & not ONCE on your part (and you & I have had this discussion here before), NOR were you able to produce a superior score on a valid & legitimate multiplatform test of security in CIS TOOL I have challenged you "Pro *NIX" people to, either...
So much for propoganda, vs. solid data from respectable sources &/or tests... apk
I have used windows off and on for the last 10 years or so. I have yet to encounter an install that worked 100% perfect out of the "box". Some installs were darn close, but I always ended up in strange forums from google searches to try and get some aspect working properly. I also had to pay for it, pay for anti-spyware, anti-virus and firewalls that consumed 50% of my system resources and reinstall every other year or so.
No. The standard user does not have the choice: 99.99999(add many more 9)% of laptops and desktops are pre-installed with the Borg OS and NOTHING else. 99.99999(many additionnal 9)% of the standard users WON'T install by themselves or with one of their computer literate friends a GNU/Linux distro.
The ONLY way to give a chance to GNU/Linux on laptops and desktops: pre-installed on near 100% of selling laptops
and desktops around the world in order to achieve THE SAME LEVEL OF ACCESSIBILITY THAN the Borg OS. For each computer sold in this world, the choice of the OS must be available to the consumer. It's time for the free software community to create money channels from this market.
I can't speak for the grandparent and his problems with Windows, but for me it's much easier and faster to be productive using Linux.
I suppose if Microsoft someday comes with with a truly brilliant version of Windows I might try it out if I've got extra time on my hands, but until then Windows just isn't worth the hassle.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Nope, you overestimated. And I'm not sure what all the hooplah is about. Usage may have doubled, but doubling zero is still zero :D.
In tomorrow's news flash: Linux usage on the desktop has tripled! Penguins everywhere rejoice!
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
People don't know what a fucking OS is. How the hell do you expect them to choose?
...then realize what a big deal this actually is. Linux now has, what, a third of the installed desktop base that Mac has? And Linux grew by almost 100% year over year? That's awesome!
Apple spends billions on marketing every year. How much did Linux boosters spend for the desktop? $100,000? Commercial Linux folk are still focused on servers.
Everyone involved with Ubuntu should pat themselves on the back, since that's probably where most of the growth came from. Maybe businesses are waking up to the savings you can have by not using Windows (though not all businesses can save, I'm sure many out there can). Actually, I've noticed that anything that makes IT guys happy incurs a lot of cost savings.
Evidently you missed the part of the license agreement for the CIS tool where it says that you:
... (viii) represent or claim a particular level of compliance with a CIS Benchmark, scoring tool or other Product."
"will not
Also, to better harden your system I strongly suggest that you delete your web browser.
Thank you.
Novell, RedHat, PCLinuxOS, Freespire, Sabayon, Mandriva, Ubuntu, slackware, gentoo etc. haven't a clue how many boxes their distribution is installed on, but I bet it's many many times their traceable installed base.
Agreed.
And there's another stretching going on, favouring Windows' numbers.
The other way round, if you buy a PC with Windows pre-installed and you do not launch this Windows even once, but wipe the hard drive instantly in order to do a Linux installation, the one OS that will get an "add 1" in the "market share" aspect will be Windows. Currently, there's no way a next-day Linux install could ever lead to a "subtract 1" from the Windows numbers...
One PC sold, one Windows counted - following the "market share" model, it has been as simple (and misleading) as this, for many years.
It might be even more irrelevant when somebody tries to guess something like "installed base" numbers of OSes, based on such shaky "market share" values...
Yep... I've tried several different distros, Ubuntu 6.10 live cd being the latest. I was mainly interested to see if it would recognize my wifi drivers on bootup, but of course it didn't. I fiddled around with the gui control panel to see if it would work, but after about a half hour of trying I gave up.
I'm not a complete novice, I am a backend java developer by trade and used linux desktops in the computer labs at school (about 4 years ago). I actually ran Red Hat on my desktop a few years ago, as a dual boot, and my roommate helped me get wifi working on that. But it was some pretty good hoop jumping to do so. I realize Windows XP doesn't always recognize my drivers either, but I can usually get those working by putting in the driver cd and going from there. The point is that I am simply more familiar with Windows XP, and I am pretty lazy, and would rather not spend my time learning a new os. For now I am happy to keep up with desktop Linux developments by reading sites like this. I really don't think MS will be able to maintain its monopoly indefenitely, and perhaps as their failures keep mounting I will be more apt to really try something else.
Well as I said I'm not completely happy with it, I accept it. However continuing to wait for the next Windows OS to be released has been a fruitless wait so with the latest release, while Linux continues to improve (with only a cursory search already revealing one advantage). So that's why I'm switching.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Ubuntu installs painlessly on all the hardware I care about
So then please call me when I can use my bcm4321a/b/g+n&bluetooth card on linux.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
You exceed the scores I post using CIS Tool then & on your *NIX system of choice (a challenge I freely provide & challenge *NIX users to here over 30x now in the past year)?
I will eat my words on THAT part of the evidences I use, no problem. I have already exceeded the score I initially posted on my Windows Server 2003 SP #2 originally of 84.735/100, up to 85.185... & on Windows XP Workstation CIS TOOL tests, I can exceed 85.536/100.
I also provide the photo evidence for it, & the methods to do so in the posts I did challenging the *NIX crowd here to, in the CIS TOOL test.
Also - care to dispute & disprove the data from SECUNIA as well??
(Nope... didn't THINK so!)
APK
P.S.=> "Also, to better harden your system I strongly suggest that you delete your web browser." - by Smallpond (221300) on Sunday October 07, @11:40AM (#20888281) By the way, I use OPERA:
Opera security advisories @ SECUNIA (0% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/product/10615/?task=advisories
FireFox security advisories @ SECUNIA (43% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/product/12434/
IE 7 security advisories @ SECUNIA (56% unpatched):
http://secunia.com/product/12366/
So much for your statement I quoted... TOO easy! Want a SAFE(r) BROWSER today??
Stop using JavaScript on EVERY website & also use a better browser (like Opera - fastest & safest one there is, as well as being compliant to many web development standards, & is also multiplatform too). Same with FRAMES on sites you can live without them (or, Javascript).
APK
P.S.=> I only REALLY care about facts, & NOT your b.s. "games" via semantics &/or word play about licensings... See, what I care about, like MOST folks, is valid, rational, undeniable evidences.
Got those, vs. the data I put out?? Nope, again - didn't think so!... apk
What do they mean by market share? The amount of money that's been paid for licenses?
The number of licenses sold?
Seriously, how do you find out how many Linux installs there are? It's not like people buy Linux in a store, they either download it, or copy it from a friend. This is not much different to Windows, but with Linux it's obviously legal and even some companies do it like that.
Probably the most accurate study could be conducted by Google and Yahoo. They could count how many people actually _use_ what OS, at least among internet users. However that would still underestimate the actual share of Windows boxes as a good part of them probably is not connected to the Internet.
Are you referring to the iPhone GUI? I thought everyone knew they pinched that from Star Trek TNG?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The difference here is that no one* claims Windows is free. If somebody claims the TCO is exactly the box price, then fine. But when Linux vs. Windows is oversimplified to Linux costs less it pays to realize that it simply isn't that clear in all cases, and objective data on the subject isn't so very commonplace.
* assuming they are sticking to non-pirated copies. Pirated copies tend to end up with even more problems you have to google for.
Most people, just like you, take the pragmatic approach. The OS (and the associated hardware) is just a tool to do whatever it is you need to do.
Now just like your car is a transportation tool, you want certain things from it, chiefly predictability and reliability, and perceived value. It needs to start and go whenever you want it to, and not cost you an arm and a leg to buy and operate.
But your vehicle also needs to have certain, convenience, comfort, and style features. Although not essential, these things need to make you feel good when you drive your car, or at the very least prevent you from encountering aggravations when operating your car.
If that is a Ford, GM or Toyota you don't much care, unless you are a brand freak. But you might make the comparison, and I am old enough to remember this, between Toyota and the other "big three". When first imported the Toyota products were a joke, but with years of attending to the things that the others didn't, predictability, reliability, convenience, comfort, quality and style, guess who is number one now? This took about 30 years to happen, no "critical mass" thing, that you hear all the marketers trumpet about, just slow and steady, and absolutely no fanfare when it happened. So in 30 years Toyota went from last to bigger than GM (the biggest), and don't you think that MS knows this?
I've been trying yet again for the 4th time in 5 years to give Linux a go to see if it has matured enough for it to go mainstream desktop, and though I can say that it has improved tremendously over the years, it is sadly still not ready for primetime ordinary folks desktop. It is most certainly good enough for the fanboys and geeks here, but coming also from a geek but not really a fanboy, it is just not ready yet. Let me qualify:
... this is a stability issue.
... these things should be idiot proof - but in Linux - they still are not. You just still have to drop down to a terminal to do many things, despite the nice glossy UI these days.
..., and for what its worth - for something that's free, Linux is pretty usable and a good bang for your buck. But if you ask if I'll pay US$300+ for something that's a lot more cohesive, has a lot more apps (and not free rip-offs), 'stable' and most importantly user-friendly ... yes I would.
... //
Stability(!): Yes, I know there's a big gasp amongst some of you, but my trial installation of OpenSuse 10.2 on my Gigabyte 965P-DS3, C2D E6600, nVidia 8600GT was actually not stable. Although things run solid on XP, I kept getting hangups after just a few minutes of use. So in my book, (due probably to drivers as usual)
Drivers: What more can I say - try getting your peripherals, cards etc. to work without being a hacker.
Control Panel: In Mac or XP, everything is easy and self-explanatory. Try navigating (if you're not a geek) through the 'control panel' in Gnome or KDE (KDE is better but still...). "Should I use YAST or should I go to 'Internet'?!" "How the hell do you connect do a PPPoE?"
Fonts!: Sorry dudes, fonts in Linux just look horrible when compared to Windows or the Mac. And this is one of the biggest reasons that keep would keep me away from using Linux Desktop. Linux is fine for backend stuff and does a great job at it - but on the frontend, despite the nice eye-candy in current Gnome and KDE - the font engine still sucks! As I type this in Windows, everything appears smooth due to ClearType. On Linux sometimes I get non-aliased fonts and most times, the fonts just appear bad.
Names: Yes, it is a great tradition in the hacker culture to come up with cool sounding names for apps - but that's not something that will draw ordinary folks to use Linux. I mean, how would any ordinary folk guess what 'YaST2' is at the menu? Getting the ordinary folk not intimidated by all these weird names was and still is the whole point of Apple. Windows followed and though may not have the style of Apple, it sure is a helluva more usable than Linux.
OK - some may argue that I didn't set things up properly or I am not competent enough to set things up the right way - but that's the point! I shouldn't need to be more competent than being able to press a few mouse-clicks to be able to get what should be a minimum base in a modern computing environment:
* Beautiful fonts rendered as if it was printed.
* All programs appear in a menu (and not hidden deep inside some mysterious command).
* Cohesive presentation of applications (Look at YaST appearing all over the place in KDE).
* Plug and Play (no this is not the 90's but Linux implementation of this is not usable - I buy any peripheral and I still have fear on if there's a driver for it.
I guess what you pay for
Now if only ol' Steve will finally let OS-X run on any x86 hardware
So you've had to edit your registry to get the GUI working properly?
...this: http://spe.atdmt.com/ds/NMMRTUMISITP/mrs06256_news_336x280.jpg?spd=90&atdmt=?spd=90 Actually, I'd like to know why exactly this Paul Campbell is a *former* director... BTW, who let that in there at all?
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Exactly my point. Thank you.
Linux is hardly $0.00.
No, it's not the year of linux desktop. Double nothing is still nothing.
(Hey! I run linux too, but let's be realistic here...)
So you, who are only now in 2007 discovering the migrating servers to Linux is a good idea, do not think Linux is ready for the desktop? Hmmm, well I have to point out that some of us are further along the adoption curve than that. I've been using a Linux desktop for work (not excluding dev work - I was on Linux for that 7 years ago) for the last four years and it just gets better and better. We're now seriously considering a pilot scheme using custom locked-down Linux desktops for some non-tech staff at work. (It's easiest for people who are in web apps and UIs 7 hours of 8; it's the so-called "power user" types, who've got a lot more invested in learning all the sekrit microsoft l337 tricks'n'tips that are the problem.)
Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
Well, the densely populated U.S. cities could have been done. Still could be done. Still are not being done. I suspect the size of Japan isn't the only factor. There might be plenty of blame left over to assign to shortsightedness.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Just do not buy a crappy inkjet printer or all-in-one laser. If you need to scan, buy a small scanner. If you want to use a professional operating system, use professional kit with it.
Pining for the fjords
So basicaly what you are saying is "As long as it runs putty.exe I don't need anything else"
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
have a dual boot system XP / Linux for ever. only reason have to boot XP
:
is for the games. Am sure if everyone came up a list and did a distinct
of all items we would end up with 100 or so action items preventing mass adoption of linux.
Reasons for not going solo on Linux
1. Games (More important than any other)
2. Adobe IDEs (Dreamweaver, Flash etc)
3. Greenbow an IPSEC VPN client (I know the stock kernel supports VPN but is flaky and instable as hell)
4. Verizon V640 PCI Xpress - National Broadband express wireless card.
5. Canon Scanner Lide 500f No support.
Like, Dude. With experience like that and all, why not log in and post under your name? I mean, maybe somebody might want to hire you or something. Hell, you don't know. Maybe Bert would even hire you.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
What? No flames? No holy wars? You must be new here.
*looks at respective user IDs* Oh. Heh. Okay, I think you just earned all the Slashdot-related respect I had to give.
It's along weekend up here in Canada, the perfect time to try something fun. After hearing endless praise of Ubuntu I decided to download an ISO and try it out on my G4 Powerbook.
I spent close to a half hour on the Ubuntu web site, on the download page, the Ubuntu home page, the FAQ, and anywhere else that seemed likely and couldn't for life of me find a download link. Searches for PowerPC and Powerbook turned up nothing.
Finally in the Ubuntu forums I discovered that Ubuntu no longer formally supports the PowerPC architecture, that PPC is "community supported", and that judging by the forum comments there some issues even though Apple hardware is pretty much standard from one machine to the next.
Is it too much to ask that Ubuntu add a comment and link on their download page directing PPC users elsewhere?
Really it's stupid things like this that seem to crop up every time I decide to try out Linux.
Three Squirrels
I have never had to do anything to get the GUI up. I have often had fight the os to get various hardware or software to work. And you essentially need a second computer to get a pre SP2 install up to date. The 'ole you need IE7 to install sp2, but you can't get SP2 in windows update without IE7 retardation. This isn't an issue at work where I have plenty of workstations to flip back and forth to, but at home with a brand new pc and no other. . . huge inconvenience. Yes, yes, I avoid it with a slipstreamed image and normally the workarounds can be found with some searching and a little technical knowledge, but all of this is every bit as technically advanced and difficult as any of the "gotchas" I've had in linux (never seen them, ever in osx).
There is a reason that the average computer user is willing to pay $80+ to have windows installed for them.
Your post is modded -0- right now. I guess personal anecdotes are welcomed on /., unless you're saying something the linux zealots don't want to hear. Sad.
damaged by dogma
What GUI? You meant ncurses or framebuffer? Or do you meant X? Windows don't have X included by default, and I don't recall manually editing text file is the requirement for installing X. There is this thing called auto-detection.
I am still waiting for the abolishment of windows registry.
simple math tells us this!
.81%. extending this trend into the future:
linux doubled its market share over the last year to
2008: 1.62%
2009: 3.24%
2010: 6.48%
2011: 12.96%
2012: 25.92%
2013: 51.84%
2014: 103.68%
so there you have it - 2014 is REALLY the year of the linux desktop, when it will have over 103% of the market.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I'm the sysadmin/help desk guy for a large law firm. I use windows because all of my users use windows. I need to have what they are using to trouble shoot connectivity problems and user interface issues, for example. When someone calls me complaining about a desktop issue, I can't say, "Sorry, I can't remember how to do that in Windows." Or "Pretty strange problem. Go on!" I need to see the problem as they are seeing it in front of me. As it is now, I refuse to solve I.E issues anymore. I.E. has gotten too stupid. I tell them to use Firefox. At my last job I used Linux (Debian) for the desktop, and I really liked it, but I had no users to bother with. On the server side we use Linux primarily. I can't wait to get rid of this Windows cr@p again.
People always point to sophisticated software being unavailable on Linux. But the majority of users don't use photoshop. I think the problem is that even basic system services are still flaky, so that even if all you want is to use a browser and basic office applications (which work, in my opinion), linux is still too much of a hassle.
My latest example: I can't get VPN to work as documented on Ubuntu 7.04. When I asked about this on the Ubuntu forums, I got the response that "yeah that's broken, but you can do the following on the command line..." Suspend/hibernate doesn't work reliably. There are too many of these rough edges in the basic plumbing, forget the advanced applications.
The good news is that Linux edges closer every year. Things like sound, TV tuner card, and remote support that were a hassle two years ago now work out of the box because of improved support in the kernel, alsa, and lirc. So it's getting there, but IMO it isn't there yet.
Once the interface to the plumbing is working cleanly and correctly, I think we'll see a big uptick in adoption.
That's lots of good "theoretically, THIS could happen, and you'd be screwed!" FUD. I'm scared! Do you wear a helmet 24/7? You should. You could fall down and hit your head!
I don't respond to AC's.
>>I mean, how would any ordinary folk guess what 'YaST2' is at the menu?
Maybe because the entry is "Administrator Settings", with "YaST" just as a subtitle?
If I had to make my mom install an OS today, it'd be Ubuntu.
Apple's OS is the MOST innovative out of the three. Do your research and you'll see why. Linux isn't innovative at all, and neither is MS. Hell, the first commercial OS GUI came from APPLE! No wonder you're not getting modded at all...idiot.
"Of course the focus of the article is that Vista is kicking butt over Mac/Linux, which is not particularly surprising."
I've seen Vista, and I'm surprised it sells at all.
But that's just Fedora alone. Ubuntu has a significantly bigger "marketshare" than Fedora. SuSE is also a significant player. Altogether, the Linux marketshare is probably somewhere between 3-5 times what Fedora is reporting, which would put Linux at about a 3-4% marketshare, worldwide.
But the point remains that the numbers in the article don't jibe with what most other people are reporting. In fact, these numbers are downright silly.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
It would be interesting to find out what the domestic use is. It strikes me that for things like Netware integration, directory services of any kind, common desktop and policies, corporations don't have much choice bar Windows. But for home use, my guess is that more than a few % are Linux users.
It just means that Linus installed it on his daughter's desktop. From one to two copies is a doubling. No one else would use this junk.
Stability(!): Haven't had an OS stability issue on my Fedora laptop. Granted, I haven't tried Suse since I didn't like the 10.0 live CD. I haven't had any real staibility problems on any OS since MS Windows 98. I have had plenty of app stability problems on both MS Windows and Linux. Beryl sometimes had window decoration issues, but I can live without Beryl, and lately just clicking on the Beryl manager automatically fixes them. At work, Windows Explorer locks up alot, but that seems to be more of a network problem.
Drivers: You're right. This is partly a chicken and the egg sort of issue. Still all my hardware except the Broadcom wireless works flawlessly under Linux.
Conrol Panel: This is a problem for me in all of the OS's I've used (haven't tries MS Vista yet), but your main points seem to be related to the "Names" issue you bring up.
Fonts!: Sorry dude, fonts look better to me on my dual boot laptop under Linux than they do under XP, and also better than they look at work on my XP desktop. I did make the mistake of installing a true-type package under Fedora, which screwed up my defaults and made things look worse. However, I've managed to correct most of that, and everything looks good again, ant-aliasing and all. (The exception being emacs)
Names: You're right about non-intuitive names in Linux. But most of that is due to the pre-conditioned familiarity of the Windows names (otherwise, how would I know that "Outlook" is for email) and the improper trademarking of common language words like "Word" and pre-existing computer specific words like "Windows".
I read the article, and it makes no mention of how they measured these numbers, or who these "Market Share by Net Applications" people are. I've never heard of them, so it all seems very fuddish to me, especially with the several digits of precision on their percentages. Plucked out of their arses would be my guess, or measured from a self-selecting sample group and then extralopted to some imaginary global norm.
How much of taht Vista % comes from OEM default installs where the buyer had no option?
How does this square with other figures showing higher figures for net surfers using Linux? And has anyone figure for the number of Linux users who set their user agent to IE/Win.
In larger companies IT is where computers n00bs go to die. It is likely an entirely different department from, say, Sysadmins or DBAs or networking, whose sole purpose is to:
A. Unpack and install desktops when they arrive.
B. Help Betsy with her resolution in the acct. dept.
C. Call IBM when _anything_ on your laptop fails, get a ticket number and handle the outbound/inbound shipping of your laptop.
D. Reformat your machine when there are any issues.
What silliness are you engaged in such that 256 columns is frequently a limitation?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
nothing x 2 = nothing
CmdrTaco should go back to school.
The numbers in the article are Apples to Oranges. Read between the lines of the article and what you find is: Microsoft is losing market share; which is pretty much opposite of what is implied. The truth is, the market has continued to grow and is slowly growing a little bit faster with regard to Linux and Mac OS X than Windows. They obviously have a long way to go to beat Microsoft.
let me tell you something. If you want linux to succeed, then all you need are the following things.
1. _better_ graphics. move your graphics related code to kernel, or, to processor, users do not care, finally, it is usability that counts.
2. two desktop themes, one like windows, and, another one like mac os x (and, may be their varients).
3. configurable keyboard shortcuts. don't ask your users to learn new set of keyboard shortcuts.
4. better browser, email client, wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentation tool
5. that's it.
still if it doesn't work, improve the above.
Meh.
The real story is Linux on the Asus Eee PC and on the host of cheap devices that will follow it. When the price of hardware runs so low that the cost of a Microsoft OS being bundled with it doubles the price tag - that's when the OS world changes in a big way. And it's also when it makes it extremely hard for Microsoft to do anything about it. At last, piracy of their product is no longer the way to go that makes the most sense. *click* Now that's a market story.
And it's coming. Soon. As in - next month - and it will begin to have a measurable effect within two years.
Don't get me wrong Microsoft isn't going away and in 40 years - they'll still be around - and probably still be the market leader. But Vista is a Microsoft OS that most people who have computers **don't want**. That's a unique event in MS history. Combine that with the effect that free Linux being bundled on a LOT of subnotebooks over the next 5 years, and my bet is that we will look back at 2005 as the height of Microsoft's industry dominance. From 2005 onward, it's nowhere to go but downhill.
.Robert
Actually Excel 2007 allows you to have 16,384 columns.
However, if you feel you need that many columns odds are you are doing something a spreadsheet is not best at handling.
I'm not sure I would trust a survey that has an obscure scripting language clocking in at 0.13% in the September 2007 results.
http://virtuelvis.com/
I decided to give Kubuntu a try, even took what felt like something of a risk by going with 7.10 while it is still beta, and I've had nothing but a GOOD EXPERIENCE with it. I was surprised how easy it was to switch. I could set up and navigate the system without ever having to go to the command line. I've had only two program crashes, but it didn't take down my system when the programs crashed. They just went away. Within a couple of days, the update system had a fix and I've been rock solid full speed ahead since then. My one quibble, and it is a small quibble, is that the updater doesn't have a setting to just download and install everything in the background, and only to alert me when it needs to reboot (which is rare, even after all the updates). Since there are daily updates, it would be nice to have a "don't bother me, just take care of it" option. I'm using this on an HP / Compaq laptop, and it works great. Couldn't be happier with Kubuntu for desktop Linux (though I would like to see better iPod support, but that's it).
Now, cue over to the server arena, and Linux is certainly replacing Windows boxes for all standard day-to-day servers.
Windows was really never even meant for the server space. Windows on servers has been a long standing joke for more than a decade now. It's something only marketing types can understand the reason for. Linux is and should be replacing proprietary Unix boxes in server space. Windows never even belonged there, and should simply be pushed out of the server room. Unless the admins need a box in the corner to play Minesweeper on, of course.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
I'm just curious how did they count my desktop linux :)
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Bert64's trying to talk about development level stuff here now, SO... where is HIS PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE IN IT, hands on, that I ask for from he? Well, based on his avoidance of that specific question?? It's NOT...
Evidently because I ask him for it, because of what he seems to be stating (OpenSource = more secure, vs. Closed Source = less secure & less progress possible (only in terms of trying to hack into it)) & He provides ZERO, & just more of his usual "spinmaster" NO HANDS ON HIMSELF AS A PRO FOR YEARS b.s., period.
----
"Hell, you don't know. Maybe Bert would even hire you." - by Gary W. Longsine (124661) on Sunday October 07, @12:20PM (#20888569)
I have a job in this field for a large corporation already & I have been continuously employed in this field over time in various roles from tech, to admin, to developer (for the MOST part over 15 years as a pro, some for Fortune100/500 corporations on contract OR fulltime)... I appreciate your words, but I am ok on that regard.
Also - To be honest about it, per your statement?
Does Bert64, & as a developer specifically, since he's talking out his ass if he does not here (and trust me, HE IS TALKING OUT HIS ASS with his statements earlier)... & I do NOT work for bosses that can't "do the job themselves" & better possibly than I can !
(Currently, I am fortunate in that regard currently in fact, & in that I have such a boss now who runs & owns 150++ locations nationwide AND can code & admin a network with the best of them (maybe he's NOT my "superior" on ALL FRONTS NOTED, e.g.-> in coding per se (or maybe HE IS in some languages), but he CAN & DOES 'do the job' himself)...
Side-note: MY boss may be bit of a "hardass" @ times, but, it's his money he pays me, so he is demanding... (sometimes, unrealistically so imo, & based on data I could confront him with but choose not to (he IS the kind of guy that WILL FIRE YOU, if you make him look "wrong" etc. or try to, the 1 thing I can't stand about him, otherwise he is cool as ice) but, I respect him @ least because he CAN do what all of his employees actually do, & himself!
In other words, my BOSS is NO BULLSHITTER, on the topics noted by myself above. I can & will work for guys like he, anytime, over blowhards with no skills.
Based on Bert's statements & can tell he's NEVER BEEN THERE, period & especially about development, hands-on, as a pro, if he feels "closed source stifles progress"...
The ONLY PROGRESS closed source code STIFLES IS THAT OF HACKER/CRACKER TYPES LOOKING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT, & I challenge Bert64 here, simple to prove otherwise, since he feels as he does.
----
Guys, above all else?
I don't take advice from those who have NO hands-on experience in an area, any more than I would go to someone for medical help, who has no hands on pro experience in it, & I do NOT work for spinmasters, like Bert64!
(I.E.-> Bert64, right in THIS exchange, is TRYIMG TO TELL YOU THAT CLOSED SOURCE CODE STIFLES PROGRESS? I will agree - it STIFLES THE ABILITY OF THOSE STEP TRACING IT TO FIND BUGS WITHIN IT TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF, vs. how simple it is with raw native sourcecode & step tracing thru a compiler to do so, BY FAR!)
After all - Bert64 seems "rather reluctant" to do so here, in my asking how much dev experience as a pro he actually has, to make his statements!
(Especially since he is talking on a development related item here now, though I ask him for his experience in this VERY THING!)
I can say so based on his reply, or rather, lack thereof (in which he is way, WAY off, as far as what it is simpler to find bugs in to take advantage of (opensource, vs. closed source).
Let me tell you what, from HANDS ON EXPERIENCE IN IT:
It is 10x as difficult trying to crack binary code without SOURCE, looki
Of course not. On Windows, when the GUI cannot be initialized, you're simply screwed and have to reinstall. This way you never have to deal with "strange text files".
Or your new wireless card didn't work with XP?
Did you mean to say: "your old wireless card which you bought for use with Windows" ? When I buy a wireless card for use with GNU/Linux, you can be sure as hell it will work, because I refuse to buy anything that doesn't have GNU/Linux in the list of supported platforms in the box.
Now the question on why some hardware vendors are so stupid to produce OS-specific hardware (IOW, hardware with secret specs) is a whole different story...
What holds Linux back is the third-party ISV ecosystem that Windows has.
Before it takes off ina big way Linux HAS to make it very, very easy to develop apps for the platform (think Visual Studio and Visual Basic easy).
Novell gets this - Novell's CEO stated that ISV support coming around was the biggest barrier to widespread Linux adoption. I hope Mark Shuttleworth "gets it" too.
It's not the package manager, it's not windows wobbling when you move them, it's the ISV support, stupid! (I mean that in a playful way, not a holier than thou way)
Here's to the crazy ones
I used Windows back when using Windows wasn't cool.
You mean, you used Windows back before Windows 3.0?? I used it for a few things, too. I had Micrografx In-A-Vision and it was an amazingly nice vector based drawing program that I ran on Windows 2.1.
When Works was what people used and I was being different by using Word.
I'm trying to figure out what you're talking about now. Before people used Word widely, the popular choice was WordPerfect or Wordstar. Now, I used WordStar and occasional loaded up Microsoft Works for DOS, too. But I switched to Microsoft Word for DOS for most purposes fairly early.
I don't understand where it was that you were, that people were using 'Works' and you were being different by using 'Word'? There are too many possible 'spheres' that you could be referring to. Claris Works versus Microsoft Word on the Macintosh? On DOS? I have NEVER seen many people using Microsoft Works for Windows anywhere.... Maybe you hearken from a different universe.
I migrated from Windows 98 to Windows XP quite happily because of one very important feature: the damn thing stopped crashing.
A bunch of us, on our Windows boxes, switched from NT 4.0 (or 3.51, which was better) to Windows 2000. Many of us still haven't switched to XP. Because we don't want the damn thing to start crashing again and/or we frown on the 'phone home' features Microsoft puts in everything now. I've never seen anybody who made the jump from Windows 98 directly to XP who I didn't consider a 'lightweight' type computer user. I mean, get real. Windows 2000 came out, it was much better, and it was time to ditch 98.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
I missed this post by a few hours, so this reply will be undoubtedly buried, but I'll post my $0.02 anyhow.
The problem with Linux on the desktop is not the lack of the "killer app", as so many people are trying desperately to solve. It isn't even the GUI interface selection, or any of the other standard responses as to why Linux is flailing without much penetration into the desktop world. The #1 reason why Linux doesn't have a bigger installation base is because it has yet to penetrate the business desktop market, and that fault can be summed up into one service: Native Enterprise Authentication (ie. Active Directory for Linux).
When Windows pushed out the mainframes of its day, computing was still in its infancy, and security/privacy laws hadn't yet adapted to the computing age. Active Directory came along much later in their lineup simply because it wasn't necessary at the time. Once MS saw that site-wide authentication with integrated single sign-on was the only route left to go, they hit the nail on the head with the biggest damn hammer available. They coupled LDAP with Kerberos into a single service that provided a company directory, user authentication, and single sign-on capabilities. Later their killer app became Exchange, and Exchange could never work the way it does without Active Directory. These days we have several Linux installations that are authenticating against Active Directory, as that is the currently installed authentication system within the enterprise. Hell, there are even companies that exist solely around the concept of making this setup work as easily and flawlessly as possible.
If you want Linux to really penetrate the Enterprise desktop market (which in turn has been historically proven to increase home desktop penetration), then what Linux really needs is its own native version of Active Directory. Even if we just cloned the service it would at least make Linux/Windows integration much cleaner, but ideally it would be more than that. Either way, it would need to at least provide the same data as Active Directory, as adding a method of authenticating Windows machines against it would be necessary. This could start as simply a mash-up of Kerberos and LDAP with a management front end, but the end goal should be a stand alone service that is easy to install and easy to maintain.
There. My $0.02. Don't spend it all in once place.
I think what may be holding Linux back more than anything is the belief in the community that its price is huge advantage - its not. There are two ways you can get an OS, pre-installed from an OEM or on some media for you to install yourself.
If you are buy Windows from most OEMs, it is free. Its not kinda of free or a hidden cost, it is free; the entire fee that MS charges OEMs is covered by all the advertisements (aka trial software) that come with it. (you may recall a couple of years ago a discussion on Slashdot about how Dell charged more for a system with no OS than one with Windows) So in this case there is no advantage at all for Linux.
On the other hand, for people installing the OS on their own (or getting someone else to do it for them) Linux has to deal with two huge issues. The first is the stigma many people attach to things that are free; we live in a society that has largely become jaded to anything that is free because the promise of something for nothing is often the hallmark of a conman. The second issue is that even those people who have no problem with getting their OS for free often have avenues through which they can get windows for free.
So to sum up, the GP was right, Linux will have its big break through when it is seen by the general public as being better than Windows in its own right; its price hasn't won it much to date, and likely won't in the future either.
So, yeah, about those new features.
I'm posting this very reply, while installing linux on the same machine.
God, I love livecds (/dvds).
So, yeah, vista is out... why doesn't it have the ability for me to use the computer while it's installing? Lol, I'm even being corrected for spelling as I type this.
(fyi, kubuntu 7.04)
Also, I assume that by "everyone else has said" you actually mean "I said on my sockpuppet account".
OK.Not all of the Linux distribution are easy to install. But what if your laptop came with Linux pre-installed, and all hardware works out of the box? Would you give it a try?
I work with Vista, Linux(Gnome) and at home with Apple OSX. To be honest, all three are easy to use and do their job well.Unfortunately many popular applications do not run on Linux. Windows strength is, it runs everything and runs on everything, but to be honest it starts getting out of date (applets in the task bar is in it's infancy, no multiple desktops, etc.). I think that OSX has the best of both worlds, I wish that Apple would distribute it for all PC's.
Especially when using ubuntu. Because any newbie using ubuntu (and especially any of my customers) is initially, or soon after the upgrade, going to visit the forums where they will likely find information about privoxy. Anyone running ubuntu I installed doesn't even need to go to the forums to have privoxy installed because I do it for them.
Privoxy allows you to replace the browser information string. I do this as a matter of course and there are instructions on the forums on how to do this. As a result, sites by default think I am using Windows XP with MSIE6. Why? Because there are fewer problems when I hit a site that uses embedded media. Opera allows this same sort of functionality and I recall doing the same thing ages ago when I used that with windows.
Now, how many of those linux installs are actually saying MSIE?
Linux desktop market share to reach 6% in 2007
Market researcher IDC expects to announce within weeks that Linux PC market share in 2003 hit 3.2%, overtaking Apple Computer Inc.'s MacOS. And the researcher expects Linux to capture 6% of this market by 2007. That's still tiny compared with Microsoft's 94% share.
I call FUD, Bullshit, &c. on Softpedia.
Meanwhile, http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php is reporting:
Windows XP 83.06%
2 Windows Vista 4.01%
3 Windows 2000 3.85%
4 Mac OS X 3.74%
5 Linux 1.38%
as of 1 October, 2007.
Now, one might infer that it's intended for desktops. But that inference is left up to the user. It is explicitly not what the article is claiming. TFA is only talking about their measurements of the total growth of OS's.
Had they stated that it was for Desktops only, and that they weren't talking about servers, this article might have more credibility. But they didn't. They are, instead, trying to misrepresent things.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
"Your so-called development experience is is just talk, you've not backed it up with proof" - by Bert64 (520050) on Sunday October 07, @02:03PM (#20889335)
I have before & stated I could/would, WHEN ASKED ONLY, to others replying here:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20889401
My salient quote backing what I stated it below excerpted from near my "P.S." section of that URL above next in reply to its poster:
"I have more than that, by far, & will post it IF you like (I am NOT afraid to show hard evidence, unlike the *NIX crew here is why)." - by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 07, @02:09PM (#20889401)
So... here goes & ESPECIALLY since Bert64 has now asked for:
.NET/ Windows IT Pro magazine) 1997 (iirc, Oct. issue pg. 83) issue review by Mr. John Enck, a technical editor of theirs for SuperCache & SuperDisk by EEC Systems (now SuperSpeed.com - first part was writing up an article featured on their corp. website alongside Mr. Enck no less, about the technical effective uses of Ramdisks, & the latter was on PAID CONTRACT to improve the mathematics & algorithm for tuning their SuperCache product w/ a programmatic addon they shipped w/ their product, & now is incorporated into the main program itself (Mr. Eric Dickman is their CEO iirc, & offered me a job w/ them back in 2003, but life took me to NYC instead of BOSTON) - they ARE A CERTIFIED Microsoft Partner you know, by the by)
Look here, you'll find my REAL name (OR, write the companies noted, or call them, etc.):
====
WINDOWS NT-Magazine (forerunner of today's
WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)
PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there
PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there
CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there
WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there
GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" my work is contained in it
HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), my work is there, first one featured, yet again
----
Again/once more:
ESPECIALLY since Bert64 has now asked for this now in THIS post... 'ask & ye shall receive' boys but FIRST? Well, you guys GOTTA ASK (& you always do, lol, & I have proofs unlike yourselves - I am ONLY OBLIGING YOUR REQUESTS, after all... not bragging! If you don't ask, I generally won't state it. LOL, I always get asked that eventually though, Bertie!).
That's ONLY A TINY PART in publication or otherwise easily verifiable... there's more, but, that'll do.
====
"I have worked for the last 9 years in security doing code audits and network audits" - by Bert64 (520050) on Sunday October 07, @02:03PM (#20889335)
Been @ that myself for nearly 2x as long as you have, for 1 thing...
(& I have quite a bit to show for it in recognition alone (per my list above, & that's NOT the FULL LIST either) whereas I now challenge you to show the same level of proof here, now, in reply from myself to you).
Plus MORE, INCLUDING HELPING ARCHITECT & DOING THE ACTUAL CODEWRITING THE CODE FOR MISSION CRITICAL DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS FOR MANY COMPANIES NATIONWIDE, that run bulletproof & bugfree 110% to this day Bert64...
1 in particular that has N
You should be modded down, for you are dumb.
Last week, I fixed two malware-ridden XP boxes. One I fixed by installing Ubuntu. Took me an hour. One I fixed by installing four different malware detectors, waiting five fucking hours to scan through a 20GB drive, and then cleaning out the registry by hand, and then booting to a Linux live CD to deal with a few nasty self-reproducing files, then running all four of the antivirus scans again while I slept. Would you like to talk to me further about what my time's worth?
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
If you want to run Linux, you run it on compatible hardware. If you want to run Windows, you run it on compatible hardware. If you want to run OS X, you buy a Mac. This is not shocking news.
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
Every time twitter manages to get modded insightful, or informative or interesting, I'm impressed.
How can people fail to see that his submissions are complete rubbish?
That highlights the exact problem I have with Linux:
It never installs painlessly on any of my hardware.
I don't know if I'm just the unluckiest person ever, but on the PCs I've tried to use for Linux (a Dell 4200, a Dell 2400, and an HP 9000 laptop) I've had nothing but problems. The LiveCDs always work fine. The problem comes when I go to install.
One or more of the following bits of hardware will fail to work:
1. No video card. X comes up as a black screen because the damn thing still doesn't have a failsafe.
2. No network card. Makes it lots of fun trying to use the installation for Debian (which doesn't even detect the newer Dell or the laptop). It also highlights how useless a PC is without the Internet.
3. No wireless card. And NDISwrapper hasn't worked very well for me. It connects and gets an IP address, but doesn't send or receive any data. Not sure what I was doing wrong there.
I've dried Debian Etch, Ubuntu 6.04, 6.10, and 7.04, OpenSUSE 10, and Fedora. And they *all* do one of these things.
Now, Windows is no better at all. Except that it will failsafe to 640x480 or 800x600 pretty easily by pressing F8 at startup. On Linux, I don't know how to get into single user mode when GRUB doesn't prompt and the logon screen (if there is one) is a black X session. With Windows I can go to random.vendor.com and download the drivers. I still can't do that for Linux. This is not the fault of Linux. This is the fault of the vendors. However, since it's a problem I have when running Linux, it is a problem that Linux has. The problem exists, and that's enough. Blaming vendors doesn't fix the problem for me as a user. It just makes me feel better as a Linux advocate.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
First, a big fuck you for assuming I am a low rent "appliance geek" working out of my garage. I'm not terribly offended but I think you're an ass for assuming this to be the case anyway. How do you know I don't work for Gateway or Dell? Point in fact, I DID work for Gateway for some time. I don't now, but I most certainly don't work out of my garage. I can't even get in my garage anymore, it's too full of crap. Anyway.
.net, package installers that require "upgraded dlls," and have to track down the occasional cryptic error message via a tech support call or web forum. In short, every time I watch my buddy install XP on someone's machine (no, I don't touch windows unless I absolutely have to) I thank my lucky stars I swore off that shit years ago. It's neither easier to use nor (especially) to install even when install means having to edit a text file. Who the fuck can't copy and paste text? It's not difficult, it's simply a problem of perception.
Another half-a-fuck-you point on behalf of pretty much every windows user out there. I keep hearing this "not many people have installed an operating system" but the reality is I know LOTS of people who have done so - most of them bootleg windows installs. I think pretty much everyone under 40 has probably installed windows at least once. Myabe it was a reload, maybe it was a bootleg upgrade - don't matter. I can't see anyone using windows for a lengthy period of time and not having to relaod, and I am dead certain anyone with a major brand pc will have at least reloaded windows.
"From scratch?" Yes, from scratch. Because everyone has stuff they want to install. That means every relaod is "from scratch" especially if you are using XP on a machine that came with 98 (as many still do). This also means fucking with drivers that require
Here's where we finally get to the nub of the matter. What it really depends upon is your definition of "get it working 100%". By several of my criteria, gettings Windows working 100% is an unachievable task. There are some things I don't much like about Linux, either, but even the worst of these could be fixed on the order of a few tens of man years. I happen to rate a few dozen man years as less than infinity, the expected cost of addressing my worst grievances with Windows.
My choice to view several dozen as being less than infinity might seem obvious, but in fact, it is not the popular perspective. If you read thinkers such as Danny Kanheman you will recognize that for the most part people don't think the way they claim to think. By the reflex of learned helplessness, people tend to discount the impossible, exactly as my parent poster has done. Subtracting the impossible, one can get Windows working 100% in a fairly short time period, with respect to a learned helplessness definition of 100%.
Learned helplessness wouldn't be so deeply embedded into the human psyche if it wasn't pragmatic.
It's a fairly substantial investment of time, energy, and talent to buck a mainstream trend. For any professional, I think you can only open so many fronts. My LH relative to IT is quad-CT to zero (that's an APL joke, to thoroughly date myself). On the income tax front, my LH would be closer to 7/10. I'm not motivated to win every possible battle. The last thing any nation wants is legions of empowered individuals, so the barriers are substantial.
The general public tends to constitute 100% largely in terms of instant gratifications: can I watch the newest YouTube video straight out of the box? Terms such as "will I still be able to access my personal data ten years from now after all my current software is obsolete?" rarely carries as much weight.
Nor do people stop to think much about why it is that media formats are directly tied to running specific operating systems, as if OS capabilities has much to do with it.
The other point to note is that engaging in LH has a tendency to also invoke the psyche's PR department, which isn't keen to admit any such thing, so people who have the deepest investment in the pragmatism of LH have the strongest rhetorical reflex to promote their choices as "the one true way".
Apple has historically been very good at exploiting this reflex. They do a great job of enhancing the pragmatic value of LH, and correspondingly their infinities are more infinite than most. With the brutal cooperative multitasking and virtual memory subsystem, no Apple OS prior to OS/X was within orbital radius of "100%" by any criteria I've ever accepted. The LH retort: well, you don't need that. But this PR philosophy leads Apple to more truly embarrassing reversals than most, such as their recent concession that the technical advantages of RISC over CISC in the era of 100 million transistor CPUs are commercially negligible.
One of the main terms that holds Linux back is the instant gratification bondage. Full technical disclosure of video card internals would constitute one large step toward playing iNextSonyGoobTube videos right out of the box. If the college age demographic would simply refute their instant gratification ways, and refuse to view any video encoded in proprietary media encodings, this battle could be won in less time than a Peter Jackson post-production cycle. But it will never happen. Public empowerment? Who needs that? Maybe 5% of college age people include public empowerment in their personal definition of "100%".
BTW, I'm quite conscious that posting on slashdot values my time at $0. It's less of a detriment than it might appear.
The FOSS OS world isn't going to take over the world at once. It's cool to see we are growing. 0.81% doesn't look impressive, but it's a large number of computer users. 6.61% for Mac is only going to help us. We still have 79.32% of XP users to eventually switch over to something, and these will be the people less wanting to go to Vista. Once XP becomes less of an option, they'll be more likely to look at Mac and Linux. MS will remain a juggernaut of course, but the first step is to make FOSS big enough to be an option.
Windows 71.1 %
Linux 14.6 %
Unknown 11.4 %
Macintosh 2.7 %
I know this is very unscientific, but it just serves as an indicator that the stats can be wildly different.
1 Vista didn't enter the home market until the end of January.
2 Sales in the home market favor OEM Vista Premium and Ultimate.
Buyers who go this route are looking at OEM system with fairly high end specs. Systems that - inevitably - are going to be priced a lot more attractively in November that the were in February.
The entry level Vista Premium laptop at Walmart.com - HP or Toshiba - has a dual core CPU, 2 GB RAM, a 200 GB HDD and currently sells for around $850-$900.
3 Ten years ago the desktop was dominant and an upgrade to Win 95 was straight-forward. I ran Win 95 on a Packard Bell with a 75 MHz Pentium CPU, 16 MB of RAM and a 545 MB HDD. But those days are gone forever.
Well, the densely populated U.S. cities could have been done. Still could be done. Still are not being done.
http://www22.verizon.com/content/consumerfios/
Coming soon to a densely populated city near you
No, it's nowhere near universal coverage. But it's definitely "being done."
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
We can't count exactly and it doesn't matter. If you are choosing to support linux, all that matters is how much money you make off it. And I know for a fact there's nearly enough linux use even here, in the middle of freaking nowhere, to start making money - especially with all those Dells and Emachines and Gateways shipping with Vista. Vista is the best friend linux has had in a long time.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Have you attempted to run the CIS benchmarking tool on any *nix installs?
I ask because I decided to dig into your challenge a bit deeper and what I've found is that the CIS tool for linux is a bit outdated and in some cases flat out incorrect in its analysis and resulting score for linux. That said, it is an interesting tool and does provide valuable hardening information, however, the resulting score is meaningless for any kind of comparison or challenge.
Specifically...
The tool give fails in a couple of tests for permissions on removeable media and fstab settings for media mounts but fails to take into account that the fstab entries don't even exist and the system has no removeable media (it was a headless web server).
The tool found some files that it didn't like the permissions on and gave a failed score but it didn't take into account that the files were protected by the selinux MAC and in fact the file permissions were meaningless for all but the approved contexts.
And then of course there were the failed scores because it was a web server and the benchmark tool suggested turning off apache and mysql. Without which it wouldn't be much of a web server.
Lots of failures for X11 stuff, but its a headless box and X isn't installed. The config files it tries to check don't even exist so it marks it up as a fail.
It goes on and on. Perhaps for Windows the CIS benchmark tool does a better job of analyzing an install, or perhaps its simply more up to date. For linux the CIS tool still needs a ton of work before it will produce accurate results for many of the latest linux distros.
So if your wondering why nobody is taking you up on your CIS benchmark score challenge its because the benchmark tool for linux is inaccurate. Making non-sensical changes to a working system to fake a higher score on the CIS tool is a waste of time.
Go ahead and flame away, I'll put on my Nomex underwear. Linux, in its wide variety of flavors is a good operating system. Technologically it has many features that Windows operating systems don't implement as well. But there are things that Microsoft gets and does well. These things are important to consumers and to companies that put Microsoft operating systems on their boxes. Linux fans I think like to minimize these things and point to things that their favored O/S does better.
Sometimes looking at things from the other side of the fence can help even an ardent advocate of another product see more clearly where their favored product falls short. This is as true in operating systems as it is in cars where die-hard Chevy fans may hate Fords with a passion that can only be described as religious. We say the same kind of thing in politics where Republicans know they are right and Democrats are equally as convinced that they are correct. Don't even get me started on religion (seriously). Then of course there are the great sports rivalries.
I am a Windows user and a Linux dabbler. I need to know, really know Windows for my job. As a result I spend perhaps 90% of my time on Windows boxes. I have experience in every Windows version back to 3.0 and DOS before that. This probably skews my view. There are some things that make me hate Windows. The poor, or perhaps more aptly, terrible implementation of security may be my biggest gripe. Even in Vista, where security is taken more seriously, they got it wrong and traded between convenience and security.
Microsoft gets things right too. If I have a hard time figuring something out there is a lot of help available and there are usually several ways of doing the same thing. If my hand is on the mouse I can use one method and another if I am using the keyboard. Linux does this too, just not as well and not as consistently. In Windows I frequently don't need to resort to the help files, I can just try this and that and soon I get the result I want. This is probably a result of Microsoft's consistency and my Windows experience level. They offer things like "Classic View" which I can revert to when I can't quickly do something the new way and that helps too. I use this a lot because time is money and I have to do things as quickly as possible so I can be as productive as possible.
Linux has a feature (and strength) that contributes greatly to its usability problem. There are so many things you can do with Linux, you can use various Windows Managers, Package Managers, and other utilities that you can get in over your head. Then you go to man pages and each one is written differently but they all seem to have some basic problems. Many seem to have been written as an afterthought. Some assume knowledge that the reader does not possess. Some are well written others not so. I hate to have to turn to them because I never know if I will be reading for a minute or hours or if I will understand something better when I am done. In fairness, I have had problems with Microsoft-speak as well.
I'd love to see more Linux on desktops in homes, schools, and offices. In order for this to happen I think that there are some things that the community needs to address. Things that would counter Microsoft's FUD and would make more people comfortable enough to adopt Linux into their life.
The Linux community needs to address the "Where do I get help?" question. They need to have a website that can identify the user's computer and provide just the right information for their particular blend of hardware and software. This site needs some human involvement that comes from experienced users who can say "I've been there and here is what you do..." These problems and solutions can be recorded and made available to others searching for the same answer. For those users who can't even boot there needs to be a toll-free help line again staffed by people who are experienced users. All of this should be a coordinated volunteer community.
L
A couple of reasons that I'm strongly leaning to get a Mac as my first notebook... Have the advantage of a bunch of software that 'just works' and access to a Unix command line (all of my OS-X experience so far has been through logging in via SSH).One other reason for getting a Mac is to play with Pages, which looks like the first non small niche WP package that doesn't try to copy M$-Weird.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
...if they would include some sort of default video driver. Like if my video chipset isn't supported, or something in the config file is screwed, instead of dropping me to a command line, why not default to a very basic GUI instead (like they do in windows)?
For folks like me who who totally suck at the Linux shell commands, losing the GUI pretty much means I'm completely hosed. It would be nice to have even a basic GUI to work with while I try to troubleshoot the problem.
Right now when it happens, I have to go to another PC so I can try to Google the problem, but for many people, this is not possible. And even when I do find the solution, it involves manually editing the config file using vi or emacs - a huge and frustrating learning curve in itself that simply isn't worth the effort for the merely curious.
The phrase "insignificant african tribe" rubs me the wrong way. Indigenous culture is getting trampled by ignorant mono-culture all over the world, so I don't think of any indigenous tribes as "insignificant". I think you meant "unfamiliar from my subjective point of view" rather than "insigificant".
Freedom is free.
Well, there are plenty of defects discovered and exploited in closed-source programs, for example, Microsoft Windows (before the source code was stolen) to demonstrate that you don't need the source to crack.
I don't agree, for the record, that source is more secure by virtue of being open. It really isn't clear at all that source is more or less secure by virtue of the source being closed or open. Fuzzing can help good and bad guys narrow in on defects without source. If source is open, perhaps more people help make it more secure over time, including even the bad guys who might well drive a faster evolution in the open source product by finding and exploiting the defects sooner. Closed source might mask defects for a long period of time, which are perhaps exploited only by a few people on a few systems. Not all crackers broadcast their exploits. The Microsoft Office exploits which were discovered some months back, which appear to have targeted individual users, demonstrate that some crackers sit on their exploits, use them discretely, and try to keep them secret. The certain knowledge that this happens makes it quite difficult to claim that closed source is more secure, by virtue of it being closed.
Regarding your other observations, I have little to say, except that Slashdot is full of young people getting started, people trying to learn more, people trying to help, people who haven't had their morning coffee, people who know more than they share, people who don't know as much as they think they do. Just like the rest of the world. If Bert showed you his resume and references, which provided you with compelling evidence that he wrote a compiler, it seems clear that you still would have the same technical disagreement between you about the implications of the security of closed vs. open source. You would continue to have that disagreement because, really, there isn't a clear answer to the question, and there may never be a clear answer to that question.
Some of your comments remind me of one of my own principles for success in a small business, which I used to tell people when they asked me how I managed to assemble such a fine development team. Don't hire anybody who lowers the average IQ of the organization. That means I had to hire only people who were smarter than me. Very few people get the joke. I stopped telling it because some people think it to be an assertion of undue arrogance. Life is like that, sometimes.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
It may be pretty, but in windows, a typical Open or Save As dialog box has lots of functionality like the ability to rename/move/delete files without opening them, doing quick searches for files, and sifting through files with a particular filename extension (something that pissy Motif applications got right but gnome apps can't seem to get right). And that functionality is consistent from one application to the next. Maximizing a Windows window actually results in a fully maximized window. Windows file systems and registries are rat's nests. CLI-Userland is practically nonexistent and the documentation is written by and for kindergartners, but the interface tends to be less painful to use apart from the problem that windows explorer is bloated and slow as molasses. If the desktop Linux crowd would recognize that Windows did get a few things right and reinventing the wheel to add some new "nifty" feature is really a waste of man hours, then the open source desktop could take off.
"(Insert *Nix Variant here) is more secure OR securable than Windows is"
All I got was evasions, & spinmastering... no photo results, ever. Not once... in essence? Lots of talk, no proof via superior scoring.
"I ask because I decided to dig into your challenge a bit deeper and what I've found is that the CIS tool for linux is a bit outdated and in some cases flat out incorrect in its analysis and resulting score for linux. - by burnin1965 (535071) on Sunday October 07, @05:36PM (#20891041) It is in some cases on Windows too, & I state that thru my challenges here (& I am definitely willing to discuss it with anyone on that note, & I said so - I even wrote their dev. teams on where I feel they are WRONG & WHY, with proofs... no replies though, sadly)...
All just to improve it more is why. I have done the same with other security tools authors as well (like DELARC ADVISOR). "That said, it is an interesting tool and does provide valuable hardening information, however, the resulting score is meaningless for any kind of comparison or challenge. - by burnin1965 (535071) on Sunday October 07, @05:36PM (#20891041) I've heard & overcome this objection before too... I disagree! Here is why:
CIS TOOL tests analogs of security access present on ANY/BOTH systems compared head to head, actually have!
There's VERY LITTLE ORIGINAL THOUGHT & ORIGINAL DESIGNS between OS @ these levels... they all have config files, filesystems, & memory + communication protocol level security for instance... the tool tests this & more, on them all, universally.
I stated this here earlier too... do you truly think, say for instance, Windows registry &/or
APK
I think I'm probably more lucky than you are unlucky in this regard, but Feisty worked flawlessly on my HP dv4017AP laptop, including full wireless, ethernet, and graphics (I can probably thank Intel for all of those things) with the correct resolution detected automatically and desktop effects working, the media buttons all working, etc. If you're surprised to read that, imagine how surprised I was to have it happen! It was great to see what Linux is capable of on the desktop given the right hardware to work with. And now that we're seeing more big companies in the business of selling hardware (Dell, AMD/ATI) sit up and pay attention, the future is looking bright.
APK Could it be - and this is just a casual observation after getting a headache after three of your posts - that people ignore your posts? You post AC, plus your written language is not very reader-friendly. Tou might think that it is "neat" using & instead of 'and' and @ instead of 'at', but in reality, it's really annoying.
Given the rest of the content of your posts, I don't think that you are uncapable of writing properly, it more or less seems like you have decided to not do so. Also, stop typing so much in caps.
Good luck.
I've seen this guy's distinctive style and autistic focus on the subject matter in several other threads. I suspect someone is paying him to grind this axe.
These analysts are like the old guy near me (sadly departed), well meaning, but could only play tunes from the 1940's. If they don't own the company, one day their employers will wake up to the fact that they are a spent force and get some new blood in that understands the world the way it really is. They have for too long enjoyed a cosy world where they only had to report on the greatness of Microsoft - that used to be the total breadth of the PC scene, no more so.
If you read the comment you're replying to, you can answer your own questions. (Hint: the answer is "no.")
Are you adequate?
The open source development model isn't all that great; it's good at certain things (e.g., superior implementations of well-understood stuff that has been invented before), but not so good at others (e.g., inventing new stuff).
However, it took "Apple" more than a couple of years to do what you're attributing to them. OS X is NextStep 4, in effect; it's been under development for over 20 years by now.
Are you adequate?
Did you read my reply? I don't have or use Windows so I have no idea what the tool checks or how accurate it is on a Windows box. I'm telling you that the score on a linux system is meaningless, as much as 50% of their tests are inaccurate and the only way to pass them would be to make changes to the system that would not enhance security and would just fake the score. Adding fake fstab entries, bogus X11 configuration files, installing iptables management packages from their accepted list, etc. to make the tool happy will produce an outstanding score. In fact I'm sure that by faking out the tool I can produce 100 out of 100 points, but it would be meaningless as the fake configuration files and system settings would do nothing to make the system secure.
I ran the CIS tool on a linux system, I reviewed the results and their scripts to determine what it didn't like, I even changed a few settings that made sense to improve the score, but in the end many of the results are bogus and meaningless. Your challenge is pointless and there would be no difference between gimping a screenshot, editing the html/xml result files or creating all the bogus system setttings to make the tool think a system passes with a 100% score.
Anybody who puts 10 minutes into testing the CIS tool on a linux system is going to come to the same conclusion, its an interesting and valuable auditing tool but as a benchmark for an OS security challenge it is a waste of time. Now if you want to pay me $75/hour to setup a linux box for you that scores 100 out of 100 on the CIS tool then I'll take you up on your challenge, but the box itself wont be anymore secure than one that may result in a score of 50 points.
It's *most* people's experience. It's just that there's so many linux apologists and ubuntu fanboys here that make it seem like it's just you. :) The other respondant here, where everything just worked, is the exception that proves the rule. It's no good even taking a livecd necessarily - will that prove that it works with your wireless router and VPN connection? Most stores don't have a wireless thing you can connect to, for example.
The biggest issue Linux faces these days for casual and corporate adoption is, in my view, laptop support. Everything *has* to work, first time, cause there's no swapping out parts in laptops. Think you can tell just because the outside of the box says "Broadcom chipset", or even "Broadcom 4318"? Nope, cause you'll have "chipset b" and the drivers will only work with "chipset a", but you can't know that till you open the box. I had a laptop a few years ago where it was the same as the floor model I tested my livecd on, and the box said it was the same components, but the video chipsets were just different enough to not allow 3d acceleration for me. Argh...
creation science book
... OS I've ever been able to install and use out of the box. People act like Windows does this.. but I've -never- had Windows detect my hardware. And Windows comes with practically no software.
:wq
The plural of anecdote is not data.
Everyone who buys an office appialce buys it with an operating system - windows, almost universally. There is, included in the box or on the hard drive, a system restoration cd. Any system running windows will inevitably require reloading at some point. When this is done that system is placed back in, from the owner's pov, "from scratch." Unless they are using a system and have never installed ANY software on it - never run updates, installed winzip or an mp3 player or a dvd viewer - then they have to reinstall that software and "reconfigure their system."
It doesnt matter that you don't know any "system builders" who can earn a living. Your opinion is irrelevant. You are not a special and happy flower. You are a decaying piece of meat who is incapable of rational thought or consistency of behavior. So there. Blah.
Remember, the Flaming Bush was reelected ...
It takes a long time for US to catch on Bush=Gates=666 in numerology.
It may be late 2107ce, before GNU-Linux goes over 69% in the oval
office without a Clinton in position to receive the benefit.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
If you get Linux on hardware that works (sort of like getting OS X on hardware that works, except more hardware is commercially supported on Linux), then neither of these things (wireless / DVD playback) eare problems. They're only really issues when you take a "Designed for Windows" machine and hope that it happens to have 100% Linux-compatible hardware.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I'd hardly consider the increase in columns worth the price of the upgrade when free alternatives exist.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
T
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Heh. Ok, that's not what I was expecting by a long shot (as I'm not a great speller), But you're quite welcome.
:)
I was actually going to spell it "gybe", given the numerous references to pirates here. But I figured that no one would get that.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
is still nothing.
Linux is more stable, more secure, more efficient, gets fixes faster, it's cheaper even if you are buying support for it, etc, etc. All of this is true, and if you stop there, it's hard not to look at that 1% usage stat and wonder how that's possible. If you look at the web server market, Linux dominates, and rightfully so. Think about why though... With a web server, you want a secure box with all necessary server apps running and properly communicating with each other, on a machine that handles high loads - in particular spikes for when you get Slashdotted/Farked/Dugg/Whatever. You also want it to be cost-effective, especially when you're also buying your bandwidth. Linux excels at all of this. Ease of use is generally not a huge concern - most sites are either on shared accounts or professional dedicated hosting, and in either case, you're paying someone to handle the actual server work for you - if you can navigate a directory tree and set intelligent file permissions (and your FTP client probably spells out how to do that for you), then you're good to go. Sure, some huge companies run the entire operation themselves, but they're also big enough to hire a dedicated server admin, so still no problem. Likewise, ability to run a huge array of programs isn't an issue either - if it can serve, it runs what it needs to. For home users, it's a much different story. Think about a few things: 1. Games - VERY few games were made for Linux, and at the professional game company level, you're looking at a few decent ports, whatever Wine will run, and that's pretty much it. (You can also emulate, but that's never pretty unless you're WAY over spec for the game in question.) Sure, Wine will run quite a bit, but when the best you can say is 'we can run the others guys' stuff... usually', you don't exactly have a selling point. Business users obviously couldn't care less, but for the home user, this is likely one of the major reasons they have a computer, and THE main reason they bought one with a good spec, if they did. 2. Variety of user levels - Unfortunately, nearly all Linux distros are aimed at either the OS expert who can compile his own kernel, or the complete newbie who absolutely must be able to hit one button and have the thing install without a hitch. The majority of users, on the other hand, are between those extremes, and indeed, when you think about the advantages Linux offers, it's NOT the newbie that's going to jump on them. Many an intermediate user finds himself either trying the advanced distros (and failing) or trying the newbie friendly ones and finding it extremely difficult to get up to the skill level he previously had with Windows. Many others have no trouble, but consider the time it's going to take, question the benefits, and give up. 2b. Because of the above, Linux doesn't get passed on - after all, it's usually those experienced (but not expert) users that are setting up their friends' machines, and if they couldn't find a use for it, they aren't going to be recommending it to a newbie either. 3. The familiarity barrier - MS has owned the home market for 20 years now. Most of the current generation started on Windows, and most of the previous generation started on DOS. Very, very, few people started on *nix. This means that switching to Linux means learning a whole new environment, something that no matter how great the tutorials get, is never good to be a simple process. This means the user needs a clear reward - that big Linux-only thing that makes it all worth it. Unfortunately, when I think of the great Linux apps, usually it's either 'they duplicated the functionality of (program)' or 'they took the idea of (program), and they significantly improved on it... but it's not a giant leap.' None of these are easy to address, and so I think it's going to be quite a while before Linux really has a chance to take off as a home OS and not one for servers and hobbyist users.
That's not "desktop market share", it's browser market share among a biased sample of web sites. The data probably does give you an indication of trends (Linux is growing fast on the desktop), but it tells you little about current absolute desktop market share. In fact, many desktop Linux applications are in settings where people simply don't browse much.
The article gets a bunch of things right: Macintosh has a tremendous advantage in terms of marketing (not to mention a cadre of fanboys going around making wild claims about Linux), and Macintosh uptake is ultimately limited by its restriction to Apple-only hardware.
As for Vista, the numbers are probably an overestimate of its adoption since, again, the sample is likely biased towards home users and web surfers. But even a 10% upgrade rate from XP to Vista would be an embarrassment: that's lower than the PC replacement rate. Far from indicating that people are upgrading to Vista, it shows that even people who buy new PCs refuse to upgrade. If Vista offered any perceived value, people would be rushing out to buy it.
this statistic is based on browser ID counting on websites that use the hitslink technology
no wonder, vista is kicking butt, the only site that does this is support.microsoft.com
no, this information was totally made up, but it demonstrates perfectly, why this statistic is completely worthless...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I use Linux terminal servers which magnifies the above effect. Imagine a room full of XP machines that have just been re-imaged to clean out the cruft. Useless. It would take days to re-install all the stuff I need to teach my courses. I plugged in my Linux terminal server, adjusted the BIOS of each client to boot PXE and voila! A working lab! If I installed the server from scratch it would take a while but I get a bunch of computer seats for the effort. There is no way M$ makes sense competitively against the numbers one can get with Linux. As the price/performance ratio for hardware keeps getting better, GNU/Linux keeps looking better for me because a single server can handle more clients. Last year, I built a system with six servers to run thin clients all over a school. This year, with the quad-core Opterons coming on-stream, a medium sized school could run from a single terminal server, perhaps 200 thin clients and one server costing $4000. If you have the package lists and a local repository on a gigabit/s link, you could install the software for such a system in an hour. Imagine 200 installations of XP! Even re-imaging 10 gB images all over the building would take way more time and trouble than one installation of Linux. Tell me about cleaning malware off 200 machines! M$ is malware.
A problem is an opportunity http://mrpogson.com
When Wine fully supports windows software - linux will rule the world, its that simple.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I know this is often not a relevant issue, as most closed software, for awhile there, was sufficiently reliable that you wouldn't need to fix bugs. Most open software has some pretty big problems -- Firefox's memory leaks, for instance.
But closed software still has some of the biggest, stupidest bugs that would NOT stand in an open system.
I do HD-DVD development. I use Microsoft's HDiSim. Here are two showstopper bugs:
1) No vista support. Even Microsoft doesn't support Vista. I had to wait a week for this laptop to be downgraded to XP because of this.
2) No USB keyboard support. I'm on a laptop with an internal PS/2 keyboard, so this is inconvenient, but not a huge deal. But many Dells don't even come with PS/2 ports anymore -- it's USB or nothing. The best idea I've heard as to how to deal with this is to run it in a virtual machine, where I can set my real (USB) keyboard to be whatever I want it to be (USB, PS/2, Serial, whatever) -- but then, why not use Linux as the host OS?
Neither of these would stand in an open product. Not because "the community" is "better", but because I would go in and fix it myself.
Someone tell me, has Microsoft fixed the audio/net bug yet? The bug where playing music in Vista drops your network performance to 10%? (Drops it by 90%, to 10%.) Because if Linux ever had that problem, I'd fix it, too.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Every time I've tried Linux, I'd had some software not work. Hell, the first time I tried Linux was way back when Corel Linux was still an option-- on the online documentation, it claimed that it supported Soundblaster 128 sound cards. Great, that's what I have! But when you install it, no sound... no matter what you do, no sound.
Next time I tried it was some version of Ubuntu to use as a MythTV computer. The IVTV driver, which supports "every" Hauppauge WinPVR 150 somehow magically doesn't support my Hauppauge WinPVR 150. Screw it, I went back to Windows and used EyeTV.
Last time I tried Ubuntu a few months ago on my iBook. It failed to sleep the hardware when the lid was closed (a dangerous mistake), and of course wifi didn't work. And the only way to get wifi to work was to have a computer with working wifi first. Nice Catch-22 there, Ubuntu.
Since Ubuntu is widely believed to be the best Linux distro, I can only conclude that Linux is crap. I'd also like to point out a theme here: Linux software makers, stop blatantly lying to your users about what hardware is supported! Don't tell me iBooks are supported if you don't sleep. Don't tell me you work with SoundBlaster 128 cards if you don't! Stop telling me IVTV can be used with all Hauppauge cards when it can't! I'm sick of being lied to.
Comment of the year
For a non-Apple laptop, my first OS choice would be Solaris, which has an even more restricted HCL than Linux. With the proper hardware it would be possible to browse the web at Panera and play DVD's on Solaris as well as Linux. However, neither Solaris or Linux has anything quite like the iLife and iWork stacks (OOo is pretty much an M$-Orifice clone and I'd like to try something different).
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
If you want to use the iLife and iWork software, then you obviously need a Mac to do that. Just remember that a MacBook is *not* the appropriate hardware to run Linux or Solaris - on the off chance that you decide what you really wanted was KOffice, Gnome Office, or some other better-on-*nix software.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
The problem is simple, and has been for a long time. User friendliness. The people who work on Linux were also the people who used Linux. They are power users who like complexity, and have no problem with it. This is a very small group out of the majority. I kinda tread the line between being a casual user and power user, and I can say that it's still not User-friendly enough. When I converted to Linux and installed Kubuntu, I had countless problems with the default install file provided on the Kubuntu website. Ones that only a power user could solve, and would turn a casual user away.
It took me half a day to change only my screen resolution, and I had to learn, from scratch, how to get root, what the password for root was, what to type in the terminal to get the configuration program, then I had to quit, download a driver, try to compile it, find where I had to find the files to compile it, realising I had to compile THAT, and then discovering the package manager and realised that although it was installed, I couldn't compile for some reason, blah blah etc etc... It was a nightmare. I still can't automount drives, and I can't compile. And Ubuntu is the unofficial main distro for Linux? Someone needs to either fix Ubuntu, or change Linux's image and make Red Hat popular.
90% of it is easy to use and automated, but the remaining 10% was my problem. With Windows you can download an install file and run straight off it, but here either the Terminal or the Package Manager must be used. Someone should make a program that can compile and install source code automagically, and integrate it into the distros.
I love Linux (and I mean "Linux", as in SuSE or Fedora or Ubuntu, not "GNU/Linux", do you work for the FSF or what?) and I hope it does well and I can switch to it 100% instead of 60-40 right now. We're getting there. Dell is selling it preinstalled! I would have never imagined that. But people like you, with your "M$ Windoze" bullshit are not helping, and you're obnoxious as heck. Please stop. You ARE NOT HELPING.
It sounds like you are implying that my time on Linux is worth less than my time spend on Windows. In the real world I get paid the same, Setting up Ubuntu takes less time than setting up Vista (which is faster than installing XP). I've installed Ubuntu in 10 minutes (on an extremely powerful machine). Next comes setup, Ubuntu installed everything except the restricted Video drivers with Vista I needed to update my Motherboard, Video Card and Wireless Card drivers in order to get it to run properly.
then we have my time supporting Windows, this is where you're time worth $0 argument tends to fall over. to me most time spent with after sales support has a negative gain, my time doing support outside of work is $-0 and greater. I spend more time clearing out viruses, figuring out how to make legacy programs work on vista, updating drivers, doing repair installs and chkdsks on windows boxes which people often expect me to do for free, than I do instructing people on how to use Linux. To me if my time is worth $0 installing and supporting Linux (which BTW its not, I get paid either way) than I am still doing better than I am with installing and supporting Windows.
Also anyone who is computer literate can figure out ubuntu, I mean the kind of people you only need to show them how to do things once.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
1)It means that YouTube suddenly stops working exactly when all the guys are buzzed and that totally hot girl has actually had a few for once.
2)Tyranny-free computers, while a good cause, is not nearly sexy enough to get anyone laid. Quite the opposite, in fact.
mod parent up!
You've been working in the security industry for close to two decades, yet your main retort is "LOL"?
OS X has enough Unix in it to make it a far more productive working environment for me than Windoze, albeit the userland stuff does take a bit of getting used to as when going back and forth between Solaris and Linux (e.g. 'killall' works -um- slightly differently on Linux and Solaris).
FWIW, my Linux box will be a TS-7800 (500 MHz ARM9), but that may be a bit underpowered for KOffice...
I haven't seen his posts before, though I agree that he sounded very much like a shill. As for describing his explanation as autistic, I'm not as sure that's the best way to describe it. I'm either autistic or affected by asbergers, though I'm a very mild case of which ever it is (I haven't been examined thoroughly for some time, though I will be again very soon, so hopefully they can shed more light on the situation), and I have an Autistic father and brother (there's no doubt about my father, but my brother might be moderate to severe asbergers instead of autistic, I, again, am not sure). My father is generally very quiet, becoming loud only when he loses his temper (which can be quite a frightening experience). My father's writing is never orchestrated like that of the AC; he only all caps what absolutely needs to be, and his sentences are concise. Of course, I might be being a little over sensitive. and misinterpreted your meaning.
Just a tip. If anything overtakes windows on the desktop it could be OSX, but Mr Jobs is too much of an idiot to license the OS.
I support your thoughts; however, IMHO, there's a key difference between Windows and Linux that's greatly increased my productivity since moving to Linux (after *so* many years of using/administrating Windows):
... I'm an ASP.NET developer and I have to deal with lots of Windows boxes ... but Linux is my desktop of choice, even developing for .NET
~ Automation ~
For the most part, Windows was made for point and clicking, while Linux was made for scripting.
Now, that's not to say that you can't script many/most things in Windows or that you can't point and click in Linux, but *everything* seems to be scriptable in Linux. With Linux apps, it seems like there are always easy to access config files, great command-line interfaces, manual pages, and often APIs that make scripting easy.
Dramatization:
== Linux
* 1 minute spent telling your package manager to install all of the apps you need
* 30 minutes waiting for the latest versions of the apps to download and install
== Windows
* 120 minutes going to all the websites for all the apps you need and finding the link(s) for the most recent download(s) and manually installing each and every single app you need (you may have local copies of the installers for your apps but are they up-to-date?)
* 50+ times clicking 'Next'
Interestingly, I'm in the opposite boat as the parent
2.62^5=123
123*0.81= 99.63
so if we keep up at this rate, Linux will own 99.6% of the desktop market in 5 years.
No Wonder why Bill Gates is soiling his pants worrying about Linux.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
0.81% of people using Desktop computers read Slashdot.
I agree with the other people, I think you suck at reality. You can't wish Microsoft away. No amount of cute lists (the Slashdot spin is not mainstream, you know. Get your facts elsewhere) and creative spelling accomplish absolutely nothing other than making you look like a moron.
First of all, the whole "is this the year of Linux" is getting kind of old. Linux will be a big desktop OS when it is as easy to use as windows (Not in its own way, but actually works like windows!). My pet peeve is the "setup.exe" which is found on the download page of any application homepage, and will work on any (well) windows system. Package managers can help, but they will never completely replace the "setup.exe" found on the website.
What is working in favor of linux on the other hand, is the mounting number of operating systems that people have to use on a daily basis. A cellphone can multitask, my cable set-top-box is a linux device and so on. People are getting more used to new interfaces, and alternative ways of doing things. Things people don't consider to even be computers, are teaching them that there is more to computers than windows.
At the risk of making a "me too" post, Ubuntu also installed fine for me on my Lenovo laptop, including some things which I'd been led to believe were likely to prove problematic (e.g. sound). In fact, the only issue I have is with my USB soundcard using Amarok, where it jumps back to playing via the onboard soundcard between tunes.
Aside from that, the water is lovely.
I for one am glad your going. The Linux community I know is bent on helping each other out rather than being arrogant assholes who measure their dick by the long lines they type in the console window.
And the problem with this is? Why should Linux be just for elitist like you? What bothers you about my mother using a web browser, word processor, email client, and solitaire card game? Stop trying to demote the freedom we enjoy in the use of our software. Really it's not just about you and your need to prove your penis.
Why don't you do something constructive and share your knowledge with others? You know, wright a book about how you successfully enlarged your dick.
As with Adult Videos with the player war, is it with PC Games in the OS war, thats my view.
Tomorrow the world - M Knopfler
based on the audio desktop!
Fer fecks sake. If you can't be arsed googling for them, keep pirating the windows programs.
I visited your Autopackage web site. I was quite impressed by the way you were able to figure out a set of simple instructions, understandable by grandma, that would work for most distros.
Once you can get the user to run a given application, the app itself can take over and be as user-friendly as you want, but the tricky part is to get them to run the app in the first place, using instructions that don't involve compromising the security of their Linux system. Your 4-step instructions, which don't involve any command line, was suitably impressive. You've figured out how to formulate the instructions so that it is consistent across the KDE and GNOME interfaces. (Having two possible desktop environments is a bit of hassle, isn't it, when it comes to giving user instructions?) And, even if the user fumbles around a lot and just happens to randomly succeed in getting Autopackage installed, from then on Autopackage is installed and s/he won't need to do it again.
In doing research for writing this reply, I learned about Zero Install from Wikipedia. This is also a distro-independent way to install software. Reading through the instructions, I see that it looks like you have to install the Zero Install launcher first, and then from then on you can install software. I think this is not as good as Autopackage, in which (apparently) the software installer comes with each and every package itself, so that grandma user doesn't need to do a separate step; just download TheSoftwarePackageIWant, and it will already set up Autopackage. (Presumably it's a stub that downloads the full Autopackage installer only if necessary, to save space?) Nevertheless, Zero Install is also a worthwhile system for allowing users to install software without waiting for the distro maintainers to do it.
Now, Klik is slightly different; as I understand it, it actually downloads and runs the program from a RAM disk, almost Knoppix-style (the last K in K.L.I.K used to stand for Knoppix). Very handy, from the developer standpoint, in establishing a way to temporarily install software in a consistent environment. That doesn't really matter to grandma users, though, and the main disadvantage I see for Klik is the complex first step that will turn lay users off: you have to get to a terminal (already a big hurdle) and then type in:
wget klik.atekon.de/client/install -O -|sh
But wait! If you run k/Ubuntu, first you have to type
sudo apt-get install binutils libstdc++5 rpm gnome-about
Not very user-friendly at all. (Granted, I don't think the goal of Klik is necessarily to be user-friendly.)
So, for the three systems, Autopackage, Zero Install, and Klik, I think Autopackage comes out the winner in terms of ease of posting instructions on the software author's web site. In other words, suppose I wrote a SuperDuper program that I want to give/sell to non-geek users of all sorts of Linux distros. Autopackage would best let my users download and run my software, without needing to send them to the actual web site for Autopackage / Zero Install / Klik itself.
Also, Autopackage and Zero Install have very friendly web pages, for when people do need to check them out. Klik has a very busy web page that's intimidating to new users, and, much as I hate to say this as a KDE fan, typical of how KDE is more for the technically minded people who want the dazzling array of switches and blinking lights, and not for the lay user who just wants to get things done.
But I'm impressed with the way packages can be basically distro independent now. I no longer think that having different packages is so much of an issue, and the software author who writes The Killer App (e.g. some cool game) no longer needs to wait for the distro maintainers in order to distribute the software.
All we need now is to spread th
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Since we installed Ubuntu, the only thing she has needed help for was finding appropriate software with Synaptic - mainly to save time, since she knows how to use the search function on it. She knows that all the updates are 'OK', and not a thing has gone wrong with her installation for over a year now. She is confident to take her laptop anywhere without needing to know if there is a "computer guru" around to help if something goes wrong.
Our time is worth more than just money. Time spent fixing a broken computer is time spent away from the kids. Ubuntu was free, but the profits from stability and usability over XP have been immeasurable for us.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I think people are being a bit too hard on Linux. For one thing, it hasn't been a viable choice for most people until recently. The lack of available software and the user-unfriendly interface made it a non-starter for that majority of the population who can barely operate their DVD player.
It's not quite time for Linux and Open Source yet, but that time is coming. It will be here when:
1. The next generation of Linux comes out.
Linux isn't quite user-friendly enough yet, but it's getting there fast. A lot of us who view the computer as a tool, not a hobby, have invested time and effort into learning to "work under the hood" enough to make Windows behave. We won't throw that knowledge away and re-learn a bunch of tricks for Linux until we have no other choice. I personally auditioned Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and decided I'll stay with XP Pro 'til the bitter end. My next OS will almost certainly be Linux, though.
2. Microsoft gets serious about stopping Windows piracy.
If you include grey areas, there's probably more illegal copies of Windows out there than legal ones. It's foolish to talk about free Linux versus expensive Windows when the real choice is between free legal Linux (which you've never used) and free illegal Windows (which looks and acts a lot like the outdated Windows OS you're using now). And let's face it, your odds of being penalized for using a pirated copy of Windows are about the same as your chances of getting into a three-way with Jessica Alba and Angelina Jolie.
3. Microsoft takes the next big step down the road towards Big Brother.
One of the major failings of Vista is how much of your computer's resources it spends trying to keep tabs on you and call home to report. The next logical step would be some kind of leased operating system that allows Microsoft to channel you towards certain companies and organizations that affiliate with it. Turning off Windows Update would not be an option. (A poorly-done version of what I mean can be found in the IPhone/AT&T arrangement).
If my only choice today was between buying Vista and a whole new computer to run it (my current box is a P3 that works just fine, thank you very much) and spending a few hours installing Linux (free) and appropriate software (free)...well, I'd already be sending Bill a "Kiss My Bum" letter and learning Ubuntu.
Please pull this out and wave it under my nose if I'm proven wrong but I would bet that Linux will be found on a really significant number of personal computers within 5 years. If Microsoft doesn't make some big changes, I see Linux and Apple snarling at each other over the smelly corpse of Vista Next Generation five - 10 years after that.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
People who think Linux costs $0.00 IMHO think their time is worth $0.00
I have used linux off and on for the last 10 years or so. I have yet to encounter an install that worked 100% perfect out of the "box". Some installs were darn close, but I always ended up in strange forums from google searches to try and get some aspect working properly.
Windows is only $400 if your time is free. Out of the box windows does nothing of interest to me aside from a (with XP) very old web browser, and requires a lot of patching and suplementary programs to get to a working state. When something doesn't work in windows (at work I had an issue with connecting a Windows 2000 SP2 box to a Windows 2003 Cluster, the supplier wont support SP4, so I ended up connecting to a linux box which has the share mounted, worked first time. My linux laptop connects to the cluster fine. Found lots of spam webpages, and several forums with people asking the same question, but nothing of any use, in 3 hours of searching.
Out of the box linux does pretty much everything I want. I spend all day with computers at work, when I get home I was simple things, email, web browser, watching video, listening to music. I don't want to deal with patches, virus scanning, personal firewalls, adware etc.
When I buy a new machine, it takes about 4 hours to clean the crap off a windows install, bring it uptodate, install essentials like anti virus, anti spyware, not to mention driver problems when I plug something in.
Ubuntu is a 30 minute install from a CD that I do on the train on the way into work (when I got a new laptop a few months ago)
Perhaps these things aren't windows' fault, but the point remains that as a home user, Windows takes a lot more time for admining (and installing) than linux.
Well, the OLPC XO is about to be spread across the globe, creating a generation of computer literates among the yet uncomputerized part of mankind.
They happen to be very very many and their first contact with computing will be Linux. Chances are that they will continue to use it. Expect that desktop distros that are similar to the XO will appear, since they are likely to want to remain in their familiar environment.
Also expect the market share to increase dramatically between 10-15 years from now - the time these kids need to grow up and get out of the crop fields and into newly made offices and make homes of their own with desktop computers of their own, as the poor world gets less poor.
Do any of you have a PhD in psychology or psychiatry (whichever applies here) to make such diagnosis?
No, you do not.
Go away & learn to stay on topic.
Do any of you (yourself & your 'sidekick' who also tried to do an ad-hominum attack on this person) have a PhD in psychology or psychiatry (whichever applies here) to make such diagnosis?
(Are you licensed to do such analysis, or do you like libelling others?? That is against the law, mind you).
No, you do not have either of those certifications/degrees, etc., much as you all lack scores on this multiplatform test that are better than his, or material that disputes & disproves the data he used from secunia.com also.
Go away & learn to stay on topic (and before you libel others, at least have a degree in the fields concerned before you open your mouth & are asked the questions I ask that make you look stupid).
By the way, take a look @ this below
Cracked Linux Boxes Used to Wield Windows Botnets
http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/10/05/1234217.shtml
You've got it exactly backwards. The first thing to get rid of is the Microsoft activedirectory. There's lots of commercially supported versions of samba from lots of companies. Novell has a good one. I'm sure redhat does too. From there, anything is possible.
I'm running two AD domains with Linux servers getting their authentication from the AD machines. It's easy and works flawlessly despite microsoft's nasty hacks to both LDAP and kerberos.
1. install kerberos client.
2. A couple of changes to some files in pam.d.
3. Join server to domain.
4. Replicate AD users. (just the one's you want)
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Right, so you pointed to a couple of not very well known tools and plenty of forums slagging you off, great.
/opt/CISngtool, but feel free to download a fresh copy to make sure it hasnt been tampered with.
/etc/X11/xdm/gdm.conf and /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf
Where's the answer to the direct question regarding the CIS tool you were asking me to run?
So i ran the cis tool on a downloaded SUSE vmware image, followed the cis guide and got a score of 90.86, which beats your score or 86 or so.
I could have continued and got a higher score, but why bother? You said you'd eat your words if someone posted a score higher than your 86, so i'm waiting.
You can see the results here:
http://enigma.ev6.net/benchmark-report.html
And if you want more proof, and are willing to download a *LARGE* file, the vmware image will be on
http://enigma.ev6.net/vmware-suse-cis.tar.bz2
Wait a while for it to upload, its big... check back tomorrow!
The CIS tool is installed in
A few notes about the cis benchmark tool, which is an absolute pile of toss btw:
The check for gdm is broken, looks for both
The check for bastille is broken, modern versions have an uppercase B in the package name, the guide even tells you to install one of these versions.
Many parts of this benchmark are broken, and assume something to be more secure if it's installed and configured in a particular way, rather than not installed at all. The gdm config for instance, fails if it can't find the config, even if the gdm package is not installed at all (and thus the config would be redundant in any case).
I could go on, but why bother. I beat your score, i am uploading a vmware image as proof which is more than you ever did for your rather feeble score of 86. I could quite easily get a much higher score than 90, but as i said i stopped at the point by which you said you'd eat your words.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
See subject line, pretty simple. If reading others' words "hurts your head" (doubtless due to your being a simpleton & the subject material is above your limited mentality to cope with & digest)? Who is the one at fault here: The one who wrote too much for you to comprehend or you, the moron, who keeps reading when it "hurts his head" (peabrain). Go away, or try to stay on topic you dolt.
WRONG! Ubuntu's driver process can be simplified to one step, so long as you have purchased hardware on which Linux is guaranteed to run:
1) Install it.
Now, if you have esoteric hardware, it takes a little more effort.
1) Open up Add/Remove Programs or Synaptic.
2) Enter part of the device name.
3) Double-click on the package with the driver.
The only time I have had to ever drop into a terminal to install a new driver was with an ATI card, because I couldn't be arsed to figure out how to use their restricted driver setup and I already had the ATI binary driver installer downloaded.
Or just run setup.exe
And hope you haven't downloaded a trojan, because you have very little way to verify security.
Then after you do have that driver then how to you access it?
Uh...uhm...it does it for you, maybe?!
Linux Software bundle isn't always that great. With Stupid Naming schemes GIMP (Who would think that is anything like Photoshop?) KSomething Gsomething all very confusing.
Except that your launcher menu in Ubuntu/Kubuntu and in openSuSE looks like this:
Gee, that looks so much harder than Windows! Do I need to go into the name retardage of Microsoft Excel? Microsoft Access? Microsoft Outlook?
...Except that this attitude is entirely absent on Ubuntu's forums, openSuSE's u
Grow up.
I can it was a couple of weeks ago. Some people are not into this Holy quest so if the site doesn't work then they will use something else. Besides all Windows users should be using Firefox due to its superiority to IE. what kind of crap is that. Sure I use firefox but, to say that everyone should no. Freedom people have the right to choose. and some peoples freedom doesn't like Firefox. Freedom means making your own choices not just following what someone else does.
Wrong again! Hey, fucker, your choices affect other people. People who use IE, whether intentionally to REFUTE TEH FIREFOX FANBOIYZZZZZZ or just because they don't know any better, damage others. Their computers are inherently less secure than they are even when they're just running Windows. This opens the door for botnets to crapflood other people. Their browsers don't implement CSS correctly, which means the rest of us must tolerate workarounds that waste our time and money in order to make it not look like liquefied diarrhea on Internet Exploder. It's not a "holy quest," it's "get the fuck off of broken shit." We don't care if you use Firefox or Opera or Safari, just don't fucking use Internet Explorer.
"Freedom people"? What are you smoking? (And they aren't "making [their] own choices", they usually don't realize they have a choice.)
It all depends on where you go a newbie can stumble on an expert site where they get the rude comments.
Or you use a distro that's newbie-friendly, such as Ubuntu/Kubuntu, where their IRC channel is packed with about two thousand users at any one time, most of whom can help you with almost anything. Their forums are also top-notch, and the distro itself funnels you to those places when you go to its help feature. If you're a newbie using Slackware, you deserve whatever the hell kind of "rude comments" you get, because you were too fucking dumb to do your research before blindly going "INSTALL! INSTALL!".
Or if you were not fixed on Linux is God then you will face more resistance.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
That was new to me. Thanks! :)
I have had just about the opposite experience, but I also did some research before building my own computer... mostly just buying trusted names in hardware, and never buying junk from some never heard of company with one product with no specifications or a web site. Mind you I acquired this hardwire all about the time it came out, but the features for my Asus K8V deluxe motherboard hardly worked under windows, worst of which was no support for my gigabit network card even under windows XP SP2. It also doesn't recognize either of the raids I had setup. This was a gaming machine, so I had to work around it, Never getting access to about 1 terabyte of storage. It also randomly crashed for no apparent reason (I have learned a lot more since about diagnosing bad RAM). Ubuntu 6.04 worked right "out of the box". It automatically found drivers that worked right on the CD (most all features under windows didn't work on default settings / drivers) for sound, video, ATA and SATA raids, and network card. The first time I tried Ubuntu I was up and running in about an hour after tweaking a few things just the way I liked it. I like to be rough on my machines. I had to wipe everything every few months for one reason or another and took a full weekend, and a lot of swearing... which is why after awhile I just stopped playing with the system, and just played games. I eventually made my own slip-streamed install specifically for my machine with all the crap taken out (like MSN Messenger) which meant I could get to a working clean install in an afternoon. By the time Ubuntu 7.04 came out, there was too much more interesting stuff to learn and play with that I even bother with traditional 'games'. I am more aggressive than ever tweaking away just to see what happens, and only having used it for just over a year, It has been many moths since I could do much of anything that would 1) hardlock the system 2) crash in such a way I couldn't repair quickly. The only time I reboot is every few kernel patches, or shutdown to save power. I'll never go back... and having to wait till gaming experience is similar between Windows and Linux... No bother, just looking forward to it. I consider my time valuable, and Windows is just too expensive for my needs.
Want Big Business out of government? Take away the incentive and start by getting government out of big business!
Oh wait - NEWSFLASH/New NEWS:
The topic @ hand IS about computer material, not English! Hey, you are off topic buddy... ever heard of netiquette on forums???
I have however often noted that THIS tactic (spelling/grammar checking attempts, from those without PhD's in English no less) is typiscally the last resort of the technically defeated in topics of computer debates.
QUESTION: Do you have a phd in English? No?? Didn't think so. So what makes YOU an authority in it???
(Go away (this dicussion is NOT FOR YOU, or your kind. It's about computers, & is technical in nature (clearly above YOUR LIMITED MEANS/ABILITIES, period, on this topic)). "Given the rest of the content of your posts, I don't think that you are uncapable of writing properly, it more or less seems like you have decided to not do so. Also, stop typing so much in caps." - by empaler (130732) on Sunday October 07, @06:42PM (#20891519) If you don't LIKE WHAT YOU SEE? DON'T READ IT.
(Also - If you are dyslexic, or otherwise mentally challenged such as an ADD person?? Don't READ IT!)
After all - Who is the foolish one here:
The one that read 3 of my posts, & complains "it hurts my head" or the one that is laughing @ you now for it??
Time to give YOU some advice - try to stay ontopic. This is not an English lit. class, nor is it a grammar contest.
It's about computers...
"Could it be - and this is just a casual observation after getting a headache after three of your posts - that people ignore your posts? - by empaler (130732) on Sunday October 07, @06:42PM (#20891519) You stated yourself, that You read my posts... 3 of them - nobody's paying attention? It seems you are.
\
Ah, in 1 respect, you are right: IN THIS FIELD ABOUT WHICH THIS TOPIC IS ABOUT? You ARE NOBODY...
And, it seems there's plenty of replies to my posts here as well... hmmmm, go figure!
" I don't think that you are uncapable of writing properly" - by empaler (130732) on Sunday October 07, @06:42PM (#20891519) LOL! You may *THINK* I can't write, yet you respond to my points easily enough... (more typical
I *KNOW* You can't stay ontopic... & do you have that Phd in English, to certify you have ANY standing to critique others' writing styles?
No, you don't have one? Didn't think so.
APK
"You've been working in the security industry for close to two decades, yet your main retort is "LOL"?" - by chubs730 (1095151) on Monday October 08, @12:22AM (#20893865) First of all, I have been @ this as a PROFESSIONAL (on many levels, from tech to admin to programmer, & sometimes yes, on security related contracts), & for 15 years as a pro... not 20.
Secondly, have you been @ this that long?
"yet your main retort is "LOL"?" - by chubs730 (1095151) on Monday October 08, @12:22AM (#20893865) It is, when I confront you people with facts you can't dispute, and when I present valid tests that test analogs that exist between any/all OS' tested... you're making me laugh, so a good "LOL" is expected, because of your lack of results...
By the way - try to stay ontopic. If you have nothing useful to contribute of a technical nature? Don't.
APK
"I could go on, but why bother. I beat your score" - by Bert64 (520050) on Monday October 08, @11:37AM (#20899429) Yes, Bert64, via cheated means... you said it yourself... nuff said!
/., & whether I can trust anything I read here from now on!
OR, did you not say this here, earlier:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20888771
"I could create a higher score simply by faking it, by creating the (redundant) configuration files it's looking for" - by Bert64 (520050) on Monday October 08, @11:37AM (#20899429) That's about the BEST you have to offer: CHEATING...
Ah, lol... No small wonder your "precious *NIX" is being slowly eroded, & funniest part is, by LINUX itself...
(& Linux? How come we keep hearing for over a decade now, how "THIS IS THE YEAR OF LINUX", but it never happens & Windows is always #1...??)
ABOVE ALL ELSE:
This SERIOUSLY makes me question the validity of statements on
Think anyone believes you, now, Bert64... After you stated that which I quote from you above & your "VMWare testing methods" & PROBABLY PHOTOSHOP JOB ON YOUR "RESULTS", too??
I certainly do not. You made this so!
Funniest part is, ALL I ever asked for was a valid result from *NIX folks, & asking them to discuss where they felt this test was in error on their OS, & if possible, to share know-how.
Bert64, too bad you cannot be trusted, as you are the 1st one to post a result here... too bad it's not run honestly!
APK
P.S.= > "Right, so you pointed to a couple of not very well known tools" - by Bert64 (520050) on Monday October 08, @11:37AM (#20899429) Don't you mean code in commercial products, & yes, some shareware/freewares that did well over time (in the likes of Windows NT Magazine/.NET Magazine/IT Pro mag, books, newspapers, & other forms of media in this field)?
So, Bert64... what have you done like that? ANSWER = ZERO... prove otherwise! The very fact you tend to "stick by the losing team" in *NIX in general vs. Windows, shows how intelligent you truly are... nuff said! apk
I'm sorry, but you're coming across as a raving lunatic who is obsessed with this score that you managed to get on your tweaked 2k3 box. Bert is arguing that the test is flawed. It's simply really, address his argument in a rational way. Throwing out what amounts to a resume does nothing to prove that this test is right in giving a lower score machine without X than one with it.
You're freaking out here and it's making you look more akin to a thirteen year old in an AOL chat room than a world class expert that writes '110 % bugfree code'.
Unnecessary chime in by a neutral third party who couldn't care less who has the higher score or who is right.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
Without "cheating" as you put it, you could make a system far more secure and it would get a very low score on the cis test. I have already pointed out multiple flaws in this test and you have failed to answer them, why should anyone bother pointing out more when you have yet to answer the few that have been posted already?
// Funniest part is, ALL I ever asked for was a valid result from *NIX folks, & asking them to discuss where they felt this test was in error on their OS, & if possible, to share know-how.
// Think anyone believes you, now, Bert64... After you stated that which I quote from you above & your "VMWare testing methods" & PROBABLY PHOTOSHOP JOB ON YOUR "RESULTS", too??
You challenged people to get a higher score than you, which is what i have done, nowhere did you ask for the flaws to be pointed out, but that has also been done too, and now you are trying to backpedal.
But i will reiterate what i have said already.
CIS DOES NOT TEST "SECURITY", IT IS MERELY A COMPLIANCE TEST
Since you failed to understand that, CIS publish a set of configuration guidelines and this test merely checks if your system complies with these configuration guidelines. Because of the flexibility of linux, there are often multiple ways to achieve the same goals, and the cis guidelines only specify a small subset of those.
This is what i did the first time, my system scored 60.something, and i went through the points where it failed one by one and pointed out why they were incorrect, i write it in response to one of your posts in august. I wrote the response within 12 hours of your original post, but i can't locate it now because slashdot no longer lets me see my entire posting history.
As for cheating, i did not cheat, i merely implemented the configuration changes as specified by CIS. I wouldn't say the resulting box is as secure as it could be made, but it complies with the cis test 90%.
I notice from the web logs that you didn't bother downloading the test results, they are at:
http://enigma.ev6.net/benchmark-report.html
Nor did you download the vmware image, it is at:
http://enigma.ev6.net/vmware-suse-cis.tar.bz2
The fact you could only get 86%, even tho full instructions on how to comply with the cis configuration is supplied both as a PDF and within the output from the testing tool, suggests a high level of incompetence on your part. I am certain that a score of 100% would be easily achievable on any supported system, including windows. After all, someone at cis must have configured a machine in the described way when writing the test.
Before you accuse me of cheating, why don't you actually read the results and have a look at the 90% compliant machine?
This is the funniest part... Can i have a copy of your version of photoshop which edits HTML files and VMware images?
The results i submitted are in HTML format, that stands for "Hyper Text Markup Language" and is plain text with markup for formatting. When you run the CIS tool it creates output in HTML and XML formats, i chose to post the HTML form so it would be convenient to browse from the web.
Photoshop on the other hand is for editing IMAGE files, there are absolutely NO IMAGE FILES in the results I posted.
Obviously i could have edited the HTML results, but i would have done this using a TEXT EDITOR and not PHOTOSHOP. And because the HTML is so easy to change, i posted a vmware image so that you could verify the results.
So face it, your argument has been proven wrong and like a cocky little child, having been proven wrong your trying to deny ever making the argument in the first place. You remind me of someone i used to work with, he used to go away and cry when people would see through his bullshit.
Your writing style is very childish too, hardly what you'd expect from someone with supposedly 20+ years experie
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20888771
"I could create a higher score simply by faking it, by creating the (redundant) configuration files it's looking for" - by Bert64 (520050) on Monday October 08, @11:37AM (#20899429) That's about the BEST you have to offer: CHEATING... that's lame, Bert64.
APK
P.S.=-> The test makes some mistakes in the Windows version too I am fairly certain, but NOT tons of them (probably another 5 points worth for me on my Windows Server 2003 SP #2 setup, on certain policies tests), & I mention that in my init. postings I noted (the 30++ challenges I made to the folks here @ this site to run it, from the "*NIX crowd" here)... BUT, I DID NOT CHEAT ON MY RESULTS, REGARDLESS OF THAT, where you? Well, anyone can read the above... apk
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20888771 [slashdot.org]
... & it does NOT account for things like firewalls of ANY kind, or antivirus, but it is STILL a damn good test!
"I could create a higher score simply by faking it, by creating the (redundant) configuration files it's looking for" - by Bert64 (520050) on Monday October 08, @11:37AM (#20899429) That's about the BEST you have to offer: CHEATING... that's lame, Bert64.
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"You challenged people to get a higher score than you, which is what i have done, nowhere did you ask for the flaws to be pointed out, but that has also been done too, and now you are trying to backpedal." - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779)
I didn't?
See here (for one, because I mention it more than just here, mind you):
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=246115&cid=19774211
"HOWEVER, like any software? I have spotted "minor errors" the test makes, & I can prove this (from a Windows stdpoint no less, based on registry data &/or use of secpol.msc where it downscores myself, perhaps you NIX nuts can find the same)
Thus, because I KNOW there are tiny errors (3-4 in this program)? I know my actual security rating's higher than my photo (84.735) too, based on that fact..." - by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 06, @06:44PM (#19774211) Bert64: There you go, opening your mouth again, & inserting your foot... but, worst of all, in your cheating on this test & admitting you could/would (and, you did, using VMWare & what-not - possibly PHOTOSHOP too for all we know).
----
The BoyWhoCriedWolfert63, you cannot be trusted/believed @ this point...
APK
"So face it, your argument has been proven wrong and like a cocky little child" - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) Better than a liar & cheat, Bert64... OR, are these not YOUR WORDS, below?
... & it does NOT account for things like firewalls of ANY kind, or antivirus, but it is STILL a damn good test!
/. that said he could "fake his results"... SanityInAnarchy also said he could, albeit via PHOTOSHOP'd means... man! All I would like to see is a valid, unfaked, non-VMWare run result from a *NIX person, this is all!)
----
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20888771
"I could create a higher score simply by faking it, by creating the (redundant) configuration files it's looking for" - by Bert64 (520050) on Monday October 08, @11:37AM (#20899429) That's about the BEST you have to offer: CHEATING... that's lame, Bert64.
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"SThe fact you could only get 86%, even tho full instructions on how to comply with the cis configuration is supplied both as a PDF and within the output from the testing tool, suggests a high level of incompetence on your part - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) Ahhh... once again - I am fairly CERTAIN the test made mistakes that "scored me downwards" on this test, where I am fairly sure it is wrong... see here (& I have ASKED that *NIX folks find the same if they can, here):
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http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=246115&cid=19774211 [slashdot.org]
"HOWEVER, like any software? I have spotted "minor errors" the test makes, & I can prove this (from a Windows stdpoint no less, based on registry data &/or use of secpol.msc where it downscores myself, perhaps you NIX nuts can find the same)
Thus, because I KNOW there are tiny errors (3-4 in this program)? I know my actual security rating's higher than my photo (84.735) too, based on that fact..." - by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 06, @06:44PM (#19774211) ----
Bert64, you can't be trusted, & you said a lot of things you are incorrect about above (calling me names, no biggie, because I can call you a cheat & liar easily because of your own statements) & in you saying I never asked that anyone find errors as well (I did, & found them on the Win32 versions too)...
However, mostly, the fact you said you could cheat the test, makes me not even WANT to look at your results...
(By the way - you're NOT the only 1 here from the *NIX crowd here @
On a Windows XP Workstation SP #2, I can go higher than I can on the Windows Server 2003 SP #2 test result score of 85.185 I have gotten to, iirc it is currently @ 85.536...
(& that's with restrictive Domain Level Group Policies I cannot alter that are in place on our AD Server that cascade out to our client workstation nodes, on password policies I could strengthen, & also encryption levels used in communications... probably WELL into the 90's, but that's NOT A SERVER-CLASS SYSTEM, either).
Ah, anyhow... wasting my time on you Bert64, too bad you had to lie, cheat, & say I did things, that I never did here...
APK
P.S.=> Run it outside of a VMWare environs, & please, do not cheat (to anyone else that takes this test, thanks!)... apk
"It was amusing proving you wrong, it's fun putting such arrogant people in their place" - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) Yea, it sure was... in showing you are both a CHEAT:
... & it does NOT account for things like firewalls of ANY kind, or antivirus, but it is STILL a damn good test!
/. honest? If so, & you're a *NIX person? Well, run this test WITHOUT Bert64's VMWare (& who knows WHAT ELSE) 'methods', & post your score... thanks! apk
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20888771 [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org]
"I could create a higher score simply by faking it, by creating the (redundant) configuration files it's looking for" - by Bert64 (520050) on Monday October 08, @11:37AM (#20899429) That's about the BEST you have to offer: CHEATING... that's lame, Bert64.
----
AND, A LIAR Bert64 (on your part as well):
Once more, on that note - See below:
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"You challenged people to get a higher score than you, which is what i have done, nowhere did you ask for the flaws to be pointed out, but that has also been done too, and now you are trying to backpedal." - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) Again: I didn't?
See here (for one, because I mention it more than just here, mind you):
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http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=246115&cid=19774211 [slashdot.org]
"HOWEVER, like any software? I have spotted "minor errors" the test makes, & I can prove this (from a Windows stdpoint no less, based on registry data &/or use of secpol.msc where it downscores myself, perhaps you NIX nuts can find the same)
Thus, because I KNOW there are tiny errors (3-4 in this program)? I know my actual security rating's higher than my photo (84.735) too, based on that fact..." - by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 06, @06:44PM (#19774211) ----
So much for that... eat those words, Bert64...
APK
P.S.=> Anyone here on
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20888771
/. that said he could "fake his results":
... & it does NOT account for things like firewalls of ANY kind, or antivirus, but it is STILL a damn good test!
/., that uses a *NIX of some sort that's willing to run this test outside of a VMWare environs? Thanks... apk
"Before you accuse me of cheating, why don't you actually read the results and have a look at the 90% compliant machine?" - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) Bert64? How can I not suspect you of cheating, when you said that above??
Please... see this below, from your post I am replying to, to TOP OFF what you wrote above:
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"Obviously i could have edited the HTML results" - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) ----
Exactly... the fact you even MENTION it, AND USED VMWare environs (vs. a STRAIGHT Linux install) apparently?
Well... anyone reading, can judge for themselves.
I'd STRONGLY wager they'd doubt you as well, like I do.
(Fact is, I ran this by a pal of mine last night while playing cards, & he was like "This guy probably faked the results via photoshop or html edits, let alone the fact he ran it under VMWare environs, instead of a STRAIGHT LINUX INSTALL"... Nuff said!)
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"but i would have done this using a TEXT EDITOR and not PHOTOSHOP" - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) ----
LOL, again:
By the way - you're NOT the only 1 here from the *NIX crowd here @
A fellow named "SanityInAnarchy" also said he could, albeit via PHOTOSHOP'd means...
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"This is what i did the first time, my system scored 60.something... but i can't locate it now because slashdot no longer lets me see my entire posting history. - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) ----
Hey - I can find my posts, as an "A/C", no less!
Why can't you?
You actually have an advantage here, since you are registered, for me?? It's a damn struggle, but I find the words I state that prove yours wrong, per your accusation here:
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"You challenged people to get a higher score than you, which is what i have done, nowhere did you ask for the flaws to be pointed out, but that has also been done too, and now you are trying to backpedal." - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @05:31AM (#20908779) Again: I didn't?
See here (for one, because I mention it more than just here, mind you):
----
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=246115&cid=19774211 [slashdot.org] [slashdot.org]
"HOWEVER, like any software? I have spotted "minor errors" the test makes, & I can prove this (from a Windows stdpoint no less, based on registry data &/or use of secpol.msc where it downscores myself, perhaps you NIX nuts can find the same)
Thus, because I KNOW there are tiny errors (3-4 in this program)? I know my actual security rating's higher than my photo (84.735) too, based on that fact..." - by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 06, @06:44PM (#19774211) ----
Give us a break, Bert64... your cheating via VMWare (i.e.-> A potentially faked out environs for LINUX or any OS) & WHO KNOWS WHAT ELSE (like HTML editing, or PHOTOSHOPPING etc. as SanityInAnarchy stated he could/would do), plus accusing me of NOT asking others from the *NIX side find errors?
Well, anyone reading here, can judge for themselves... & you WON'T look too good, Bert64!
APK
P.S.=> Man! All I would like to see is a valid, unfaked, non-VMWare run result from a *NIX person, this is all!... anyone HONEST here on
5 individual replies, i feel honored.
Have you no idea what vmware is?
It simulates a physical machine, no part of the cis test ever tests for being installed in a virtual. I could dd the vmware image to a physical host and get the exact same score. The reason i used a vmware image was so that you could download it and verify the results, but you obviously have no idea how vmware works so i dont hold much hope of you being able to actually run it.
You still think i used photoshop on an HTML file? I suggest you go and read photoshop for dummies...
And you still think i cheated? I did not "cheat" as you put it. Cheating would be to modify the test program (which is trivially easy to do, the test parameters are an xml file) or modify the results (in a text editor, not photoshop). Instead, i merely implemented the configuration changes suggested by the tool's output. Had you downloaded my vmware image you would be able to see that, but your more concerned with making yourself look stupid than actually try to prove your point.
I also did some searching around the information you posted earlier about yourself, and it seems you do this all over the place... Post garbage, cry like a spoilt child when your proven wrong. A very brief search on google basically makes you out to be a laughing stock with virtually nothing positive to be said about you.
I haven't read any of the articles you mentioned, simply because they are in old printed magazines which are at least several years old. It seems that some years ago you at least had some respect and a few worthwhile tools published, it's sad to see how far you've sunk and i truly feel sorry for you. I would liken you to SCO, once respected but due to some back luck, stupidity, errors etc, you've become a laughing stock that everyone looks down upon and pities.
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Read my subject line, Bert64...
Quit trying to escape my init. challenge to you!
KEEP ON TOPIC @ least (please), per this statement of yours I am quoting now:
----
"Closed source is negative because it stifles progress..." - by Bert64 (520050) on Sunday October 07, @10:36AM (#20887833)> ----
This is what I stated to others in THIS thread, regarding that (& Bert64 took it "off course" & is now highly doubtful (to put it lightly) as to his "test methods" on the CIS TOOL test, & he points out how he cheats it basically above as well):
----
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=20891165#20904545
MY POINTS, vs. Bert64's (who has run now & is nowhere to be seen), in a SYNOPSIS/NUTSHELL:
I am saying that IF I had source to an app (LIKE OPEN SOURCE GIVES YOU and Hacker/Cracker types too)?
I could find the same (& probably MORE. more easily) security vulnerabilities in an app via its native original source, simply by tracing it thru a compiler whose language it was written for, mainly because high-level languages (e.g. C/C++, Delphi, Basic, etc.) are simpler to deal with BY FAR, than raw ASM dumps of a running app in an external debugger...
----
Basically, because it's FAR EASIER reading "Macro'd ASM" (which is basically what a compiler & a HLL language like Delphi/VB/C or C++ for example gives you, via their instructions/functions sets give you vs. RAW asm) in HLL's (Higher Level Languages) than it is doing raw assembly traces in tools like WinDbg for example!
Thus:
THE ONLY "PROGRESS" CLOSED-SOURCE CODE STIFLES? The progress of those looking to find security holes in it, vs. having OpenSource raw native source & running it thru a tracedebugger inside the compiler whose langauge it was written in!
Easier BY FAR, than tracing (using external debuggers on compiled & already linked binaries/executables) ASM language dumps those give you... BY FAR!
APK
P.S.=> This is the original point I was confronting you on here Bert64... any thoughts? LOL, this one, I don't think you can "HTML EDIT" or "VMWare Environs Fake LINUX" (or SanityInAnarchy PHOTOSHOP EDIT) either!
Above ALL/After all Bert64, once more:
I quote your init. words & what I was challenging here AND YOU TOOK IT OFF TOPIC (gee, I wonder why (NOT))...
IF you've done this type of work (though you ask for proof of my status in this field & I provided several examples thereof in publication, where you provide NONE/ZERO/SQUAT/NADA upon MY request in return that you do so, mind you) you would NOT have stated that...
(Especially since you have been caught using nefarious means in VMWare usage (plus possible HTML edits + possible other means YOU ALLUDED TO, & others have in PHOTOSHOPPING (sanityinanarchy to be specific)) & such in your "test methods" on CIS TOOL now)
You've also have had to eat your words in accusations sent my way 2x now as well, you're NOT looking good!
Such as:
1.) Your asking for proof of my status in this field (which I provided freely via examples from publications in this field of endeavor, whereas you do not EVEN WHEN I ASK YOU SHOW THAT IN RETURN AS YOU ASKED IT OF MYSELF)
&
2.) Your also saying I never asked *NIX folks find errors, when I clearly did (see my replies to this post where I quote the postings I actually HAVE asked that *NIX folks find bugs in CIS Tool's results - I have on Windows, 3-4 of them now, but I did not use "cheated means" to overcome them either, as Bert64 has)... apk
"You still think i used photoshop on an HTML file? I suggest you go and read photoshop for dummies..." - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @08:41AM (#20909939)
Yea, ok Bert64... read closer next time - The PHOTOSHOPPING? Was alluded to as a cheat method by a fellow here @ this website named SanityInAnarchy... I got that potential idea of a cheat from he, since he said he could do that... much as you have, via VMWare usage & saying you used HTML edits of your results (or, that you could - good enough for me).
AND STAY ON TOPIC PLEASE:
See here:
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20910345
Let's see you "HTML edit", "VMWare fake", or "PHOTOSHOP" your way outta that one... after all/again - it's only questioning YOUR WORDS, as I have HAD TO, thru this entire exchange (as well as your "testing methods").
APK
P.S.=>
"I also did some searching around the information you posted earlier about yourself, and it seems you do this all over the place... Post garbage, cry like a spoilt child when your proven wrong. A very brief search on google basically makes you out to be a laughing stock with virtually nothing positive to be said about you" - by Bert64 (520050) on Tuesday October 09, @08:41AM (#20909939)
Oh, really Bert? You're the one who says I said things I never did or you said I omitted things (like asking *NIX folks find "bugs" in CIS TOOL)... eat those words BOY!
Now, you also stated I never asked *NIX folks find bugs in the CIS TOOL (as I have & asked *NIX folks to find also)... so, what is this?
----
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=246115&cid=19774211
"HOWEVER, like any software? I have spotted "minor errors" the test makes, & I can prove this (from a Windows stdpoint no less, based on registry data &/or use of secpol.msc where it downscores myself, perhaps you NIX nuts can find the same) ... & it does NOT account for things like firewalls of ANY kind, or antivirus, but it is STILL a damn good test!
Thus, because I KNOW there are tiny errors (3-4 in this program)? I know my actual security rating's higher than my photo (84.735) too, based on that fact..." - by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 06, @06:44PM (#19774211)
----
.NET/ Windows IT Pro magazine) 1997 (iirc, Oct. issue pg. 83) issue review by Mr. John Enck, a technical editor of theirs for SuperCache & SuperDisk by EEC Systems (now SuperSpeed.com - first part was writing up an article featured on their corp. website alongside Mr. Enck no less, about the technical effective uses of Ramdisks, & the latter was on PAID CONTRACT to improve the mathematics & algorithm for tuning their SuperCache product w/ a programmatic addon they shipped w/ their product, & now is incorporated into the main program itself (Mr. Eric Dickman is their CEO iirc, & offered me a job w/ them back in 2003, but life took me to NYC instead of BOSTON) - they ARE A CERTIFIED Microsoft Partner you know, by the by)
You shoot your mouth off, & there is proof again, that you do!
AND, apparently, You have NOTHING LIKE THIS LIST (though I now & previously have asked you produce one like it since you asked it of myself), yourself:
----
WINDOWS NT-Magazine (forerunner of today's
WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)
PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there
PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there
CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my
Now come on, all you can do is accuse me of cheating without having downloaded the vmware image to prove how i cheated. As i said before, i simply followed the recommendations within the cis tool itself. If you would bother to read the output, you would find that it actually provides COMMANDS WHICH YOU CAN CUT AND PASTE alongside any "fail" results, have you ever even tried running it on a unix system? Did you even bother reading the HTML which i posted?
/etc/init.d/$FILE stop /bin/false $USERID
Behold:
3.6 Disable Standard Boot Services Check Type: Status:
OVAL5 Failed
Description
Action:
for FILE in apache2 apache apmd autofs fbset gpm hotplug \
hwscan joystick lpd mars-new named nfs portmap smb snmpd \
ypbind ypserv yppasswdd; do
chkconfig $FILE off
done
for USERID in lp apache named mysql; do
usermod -L -s
done
Discussion:
If you merely execute the commands posted in the HTML output, you will usually achieve a pass in that area.
You challenged people to point out flaws in the cis test? not to me you didnt, but here you go anyway:
1.5 Install and Run Bastille
Current versions of bastille (3.x and higher) have an upper case B in the package name, the cis tool checks for it's presence with a lowercase b (as version 2.x) but the tool tells you to install 3.x
2.2 Configure TCP Wrappers and Firewall to Limit Access
It checks for the presence of tcp wrappers, most people use firewalls instead of tcp wrappers these days as theyre less susceptible to dos attacks, the tool doesnt check for firewalls
5.1 Capture Messages Sent To Syslog AUTHPRIV Facility
Modern linux systems no longer use syslog, preferring to use a superior alternative such as syslog-ng, the cis tool checks only for a syslog config,
5.2 Turn On Additional Logging For FTP Daemon
It also says to turn *OFF* ftp.. I would remove ftp completely, in which case the configuration file enabling logging wouldnt be present and this test would fail.
5.3 Confirm Permissions On System Log Files
This test explicitely tests the permissions of several system log files, and will fail if the permissions are wrong or those files DONT EXIST... if you run something other than syslog, or dont run all of the log-generating programs (as the cis test recommends) then the files wont exist and you'l fail.
5.4 Configure syslogd to Send Logs to a Remote LogHost
same as 5.1
7.2 Create ftpusers Files
What is the point of this if you dont run ftp, cis recommend you dont run ftp but then demand that you create an ftpusers file (which would be redundant without ftp running)
7.3 Prevent X Server From Listening On Port 6000/tcp
this checks for the presence of certain configuration files too, not only that but it checks for the exact formatting within those files, a space or a comment in the wrong place and it fails. I would secure a server by removing X11, in which case it wouldnt be listening on port 6000, cis would fail me for this even tho not having X at all is more secure.
7.4 Restrict at/cron To Authorized Users
I never run at/atd, therefore the cis would fail on my systems due to the lack of an at.deny/at.allow, i would probabl configure cron by setting permissions on the executable rather than using cron.allow/deny as this is more secure (you cant execute it at all, vs the crontab program executing and following the code path to parse the cron.deny file)
7.6 Configure xinetd Access Control
not running xinetd at all is surely more secure than configuring it in any way, cis test fails if this configuration is not found
7.11 Only Enable syslog To Accept Messages If Absolutely Necessary
see 5.1
9.2 Create Warnings For GUI-Based Logins
this requires warning banners to be configured for all the graphical login programs, if you dont have them installed the config files wont exist so you fail.
Many of the tests are also flawed in that they check for particularly for
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This was:
"Closed source is negative because it stifles progress..." - by Bert64 (520050) on Sunday October 07, @10:36AM (#20887833)> To which I said this:
----
http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=20891165#20904545 [slashdot.org]
THE ONLY "PROGRESS" CLOSED-SOURCE CODE STIFLES? The progress of those looking to find security holes in it, vs. having OpenSource raw native source & running it thru a tracedebugger inside the compiler whose langauge it was written in!
----
MY POINTS, vs. Bert64's (who has run now & is nowhere to be seen), in a SYNOPSIS/NUTSHELL:
I am saying that IF I had source to an app (LIKE OPEN SOURCE GIVES YOU and Hacker/Cracker types too)? I could find the same (& probably MORE. more easily) security vulnerabilities in an app via its native original source!
That'd be done by tracing it thru a compiler whose language it was written for, mainly because high-level languages (e.g. C/C++, Delphi, Basic, etc.) are simpler to deal with BY FAR, than raw ASM dumps of a running app in an external debugger...
(Basically, because it's FAR EASIER reading "Macro'd ASM" (which is basically what a compiler & a HLL language like Delphi/VB/C or C++ for example gives you, via their instructions/functions sets give you vs. RAW asm) in HLL's (Higher Level Languages) than it is doing raw assembly traces in tools like WinDbg for example!)
APK
P.S.=> Bert64, listen: You said this about the CIS Tool test, & I can't trust you there:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=320419&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20888771 [slashdot.org]
"I could create a higher score simply by faking it, by creating the (redundant) configuration files it's looking for" - by Bert64 (520050) on Monday October 08, @11:37AM (#20899429) apk
Learn to stay ON TOPIC moron
The point I gathered here is that Linux kernel only (whereas Windows' entirety was tested) shows more security vulnerabilities than does Windows, and that IIS 6x has less security vulnerabilities than does Apache, and SQLServer 2005 has less security vulnerabilities than does Oracle 11x which runs iirc on Linux. No matter how you try to slice and dice or interpret the findings in favor of Linux, you can't really win, because more holes are in Linux and its wares.
" Your challenge is pointless" - It's far from pointless, here is why:
/., where before it was like pulling teeth to get them to try it. Now they have, I see some of their objections, & I can carry + report that back to the folks @ CIS TOOL (they're NOT 'big' on answering back though, unfortunately)... alongside the list I have above from Windows Server 2003 related tests as well I have found that MAY be "in error" as well!
Mainly because if your initial results are like, for instance, similar to Bert64's (who took this test, albeit under a VMWare environs), you'd probably have scored into the 60's ranges!
(& the same is on Windows, because XP SP 2 for example, hits into the 75++ ranges by default, but can be EASILY 'hardened' up to 86 ranges with a few minor mods to security policies).
The point? To show people that for all of the "Linux is secure" stuff I see here @ slashdot, it is not as secure as it can truly be. Same with Windows out of the box/oem stock.
THE MAIN POINT HERE THOUGH? Everyone gains here who tries it, by hardening their machines! Bonus... which is part of what I wanted in the first place (along with valid, unfaked results from *NIX folks on it who try it), but only NOW do folks try this test here @
(and more people replying (other than myself only) in their comments have found this tool interesting & useful for shoring up their security even on their Linux rigs in the replies here)
Does it make some mistakes? Apparently it does on Linux also, as I am pretty damn certain it does on Windows (3-4 that would put my system score into the 88-90 ranges in fact), in areas like:
----
1.) Remotely accessible registry paths (no big deal if you turn off the remote registry service OR blank them out in security options in secpol.msc)
2.) Named pipes remote accesses. (Same deal as #1 above, in secpol.msc & other mmc.exe snapins for this work).
I blanked BOTH out, per the directions CIS TOOL gives you, & that is noted as the correct thing to do - I still get 'scored down' & I cannot find out why. I have written the people that code it, no reply yet.
3.) Various userrights that certain services/daemons possess & when I attempt to reset them, they always "snap back" to the original values, & that scores me down as well.
----
I am certain if I could get past those "problem areas" on CIS Tool, I would be into the 90's ranges, cleanly.
APK
P.S.=> I see some of your complaints & points. They are noted.
Bert64 (another taker here of this test, but I can't trust folks' results that say they'll edit the HTML, or PHOTOSHOP it (another fellow named SanityInAnarchy said he could do that to fake his test results in other threads where I noted this tool)) had some as well, BUT, he stated I never asked that *NIX folks report ones they found, where I showed him a quotation I clearly did...
Why did I do that?
So I can tell the people who code it to "brush up" on various areas *NIX users complained about, as I have to the folks @ the CENTER FOR INTERNET SECURITY (who produce CIS TOOL) about the problem Windows areas I noted. I did the same with the folks that code BELARC ADVISOR, which offers similar tests, but only for Windows (whereas, as you know, this test in CIS TOOL is multiplatform, & runs on Linux, Solaris, BSD variants, & Windows).
On a side note? My score as of today is 85.256, on the "Benchmark: Windows Server 2003 Benchmark Legacy Profile - Domain" test version... up from 85.185.
I am hoping to get either "work-arounds" for the problem areas I noted, OR, that the CIS TOOL test be amended in those areas I noted, in its code... apk
Well, no matter how anybody tries to slice and dice this data, I still see more security holes in Linux kernel (which is not all of Linux, so there is probably far more - Windows was tested by comparison, in its entirety, including the desktop shell components: This is fair? Imo, it actually is in favor of Linux because only part of it was tested!) and also more holes in Apache vs. IIS and I looked @ Oracle 11x & it too has more holes found than SQLServer 2005 does.
My subject line says it all. I took a read of this and you said a few things that make you look very bad here Bert.
****
"As to cheating, it would be easily possible to create a horrendously insecure system that passes the cis test. I would do this by disabling all the default suse services, and then install insecure services manually. the cis test is very limited in scope, and would ignore anything not installed in a default location. It is for this reason that this test is ultimately useless." by Bert64
Bert64 you just saying that makes me also distrust anything you put out here.
****
"As to who i am and what i do, i can't tell you that because of the nature of the work. Take that as you will and think what you like." by Bert64
I will tell you what i think of that and that is that you are an unemployed person who is afraid to state that here. Trying your James Bond Secret Service type approach is not very convincing.
You asked this person apk you are responding to for his credentials and proof of his status in this field and he has a lot, where you have none.
****
"So if you even bother to read this and don't skulk away like you did last time, i'd be very interested in seeing your answers to these points." by Bert64
It also seems you are avoiding the main subject here, and that was where you state that Closed Source code stifles progress. I am inclined to agree with apk on his points on that, and if I understood it, if you have opensource code it would be simpler and faster to find the bugs to fix them, but, also to exploit them as well because it is not as difficult to step trace sourcecode, as it would be to trace debug an application via an external debugger and the assembly language dumps they provide.
****
"If you just gonna spew garbage again and not answer any of the points, dont bother. you'l just make yourself even more pathetic." by Bert64
Bert, you asked him for proofs of his status in this field, he provided them. When you are asked for that in return, you state some garbage, not he. Who are you trying to fool here. You have not convinced me, especially with your statements about Closed Source code harming progress. The only progress it harms is that of those looking to exploit programs for security vulnerabilities since closed source code is harder to do that to.
You also said you could cheat this test, and I agree that running LINUX under VMWare is not totally legitimate, and the fact you said you could cheat it via HTML edits also is enough for me to doubt you as well, as to whether you cheated the results or not.
The point I was trying to make is that the number of security vulnerabilities is not as important as the type and criticality of the security vulnerabilities. That's why my original post gave a relatively detailed breakdown (which you seem to have ignored) showing that the vulnerabilities of Windows 2003 are more serious than the vulnerabilities of Linux 2.6.
As for web servers and database servers, you may be right; I thought I made it clear on more than one occasion that the purpose of my post was to point out a flaw in the original poster's argument, not to get into a Linux vs. Windows flamewar.
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
I will quote the original post i made, which you are seemingly unable to read:
----
Closed source is negative because it stifles progress...
Each vendor has to reinvent the wheel, and can't legally learn from the others. With open source you can reuse other people's code and build upon it. Closed source ensures that only vendors with enough cash to develop a complete application can enter the market, with open source it's easy to build upon an existing project.
Smaller companies or individuals who want particular features have very little chance of getting them in a closed source world, they would have to pay whatever fees a given vendor demanded *if* that vendor was even willing. With open source sufficiently capable people can implement those features, while other people can hire coders to do it for them.
New hardware architectures are far less likely to succeed, just look at IA64 as an example, failing miserably even with the backing of Intel and HP, because people can't run their closed-source apps on it. And vendors won't port those apps until there's a market, thus you have a catch-22. Therefore processor makers are constrained by choices Intel made 30 years ago, as they try to develop new chips while maintaining compatibility. As another example, Apple had to spend considerable time and effort on Rosetta to allow legacy PPC apps to run on their Intel based Macs. In an open source world many of those apps could be easily recompiled, and doing so for a large number of them would probably have taken Apple less time and effort than writing rosetta.
There's also the matter of trust, some large companies and governments are paranoid and want to see the source code and actually build it (so they can be 100% sure the binaries they have came from the source they've seen). A lot of people are equally paranoid, and some of them do have the capability to audit and compile the source.
Long term support - closed source software is at the mercy of it's vendor, so there is a chance of the product being discontinued, or the source code being lost. Users of closed source software have no fallback in situations like these.
Multi vendor support - with the source open, any vendor can begin providing support services around an open source application, customers are free to choose the vendor and support package that suits them, instead of being stuck with a single source of support. As a consequence, vendors are forced to compete. If you want a commercially supported linux you have plenty of choices, for commercially supported windows you have only one source.
Less lock-in, with open source you are far less likely to find your data locked away in a secret format known only to one company.
There are many negatives associated with closed source, and virtually no positives as far as the customers are concerned. If you have evidence to the contrary i'd like to hear it.
----
And i was replying to an anonymous poster who said:
----
Explain how closed source is so negative? Sure, you don't have the option of multiple people looking at things and fixing bugs, but when it comes to an end user only thing, does that really matter?
Be serious with yourself here - no mom-and-pop is gonna see "ooh, this program has a bug, we better look at the source and fix it" - at BEST you'd find then posting, on a forum, the bug, and someone else fixing it. Other times, they just deal with the bug and continue.
*** how long are we going to have to wait for the big breakthrough?" ***
There won't ever be a big breakthrough until there are games out SOLELY for Linux systems that can compete against the mainstream games out there nowadays....games that make people WANT to run linux and NEED to run it in order to play the games.
Once that happens, then you'll see your breakthrough.
Too bad we'll all be dead before it happens.
----
Can you point out where i talked about finding vulnerabilities/bugs? The AC i posted to mentioned it, I mentioned seve
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PLEASE READ, END-TO-END
/., which IS imo, UNDOUBTEDLY, the "home of the Penguin online". THAT, & to show you guys that as nice as today's machines are, security-wise via better default policies?? They have a LONG WAY TO GO TO BE "perfect" (whatever that is, right?). I am up to 85.706 now, but cannot get farther (details below).
(Thanks, because as my subject line states? Well, I agree with it (I have not been in the greatest mood the past 4 days now, because I had to bury my Grandmother yesterday, & the day You & I "got into it", I found her dying on the floor... was NOT a 'good day', so please - try to understand where I have been coming from the past week now)):
If you broke thru the score for CIS Tool to 90++ scores, then great - it was REALLY what I am looking for outta you "Pro *NIX" nuts here @
I just do not agree with running it under VMWare is all, because IT IS EMULATION, not the "real deal".
Now, when you said you'd "cheat the test"? I got into a HUGE "to do" with SanityInAnarchy (another member here) who said he could fake the photos via PHOTOSHOPPING them... & that, to me, defeats the purpose of testing @ all, via outright cheating. That ticked me off, & it got me 'started'...
3 ERRORS I FIND IN THE WINDOWS SERVER BASED CIS TOOL TEST (that are perplexing the HELL out of me & have to be "bugs" in its code):
----
1.) CHANGE THE SYSTEM TIME: NETWORK SERVICE keeps re-adding itself (somehow) though I remove it here, & that IS the recommendation from CIS TOOL.
2.) ANONYMOUSLY ACCESSIBLE (Shares & NamedPipes (both, they are separate categories)):
3.) IMPERSONATE A CLIENT AFTER AUTHENTICATION: This is where NETWORK SERVICE "demands" to be in place, & I think this is a new thing for Windows Server 2003 via service packs, but not sure... anyhow, the test errs here, bigtime not realizing this.
(I.E.-> I keep removing any NON-ADMINISTRATOR GROUP MEMBERS as the tool advises, & no matter what? It keeps placing NETWORK SERVICE back into it. I tried to use local secpol.msc to enforce it, but GROUP POLICY/DOMAIN WIDE policies keep overriding it (funny part is? My home rig is NOT PART OF A DOMAIN!))
----
These are holding me back from a 90++ range score, or damn close to it... & I have followed the directions closely, but something keeps switching them back (I believe it is the latest service pack FORCING that NETWORK SERVICE be allowed to change the system time & also
I can only hope you did not have to pull something dumb like that, because it would be a waste.
The CIS TOOL itself is fairly useful, & others noted it in this thread in fact (if you look, you will see that other *NIX fiends did say so, & it provided them a useful guide to better security).
This is the 1 GOOD THING that comes of my "ribbing on you *NIX people here", when you guys try it, as you did & see 60++ scores on it, it motivates you to try to go higher... & you, specifically, did so.
(Hopefully under honest circumstances).
Now, I think YOU KNOW that I did indeed, ask you *NIX people who try it, & this IS WHY: I want to be able to submit some valid data to CIS TOOL's creators (the CENTER FOR INTERNET SECURITY) so this program does NOT continue to make errors... & there ARE ERRORS IN IT, I have found them in the Win32 models, as I am fairly certain you did in Linux.
Still, it would be COOL to see it run on a STRAIGHT LINUX INSTALL... but, I can understand it is a PAIN to setup another HDD, & install it, & harden it too.
Up to you though - but, it'd be neat to see a 100% non-emulated install of LINUX (especially an SeLinux kernel hooks for security bearing distro, like Ubuntu, but hardened WAY MORE than the default policies for MAC labelling security on files/folders/config files/sockets).
The reason I state this is, I want to go to the folks @ CIS TOOL (just as I had for BELARC ADVISOR) &
Do you have a phd in psychiatry or psychology? No?? THEN, SHUT UP.
"I dont know much about delphi/kylix, tho i do seem to remember about kylix having been discontinued some time ago"" - by Bert64 (520050) on Friday October 12, @08:34PM (#20962091)
It still works on the latest LINUX's, with a small 'switch' in its compiler configuration though. I have the necessary alteration bookmarked if you need it. Very small, 1 line in fact.
READ ON, I THINK YOU'LL FIND THIS INFORMATIVE!
----
Does it abstract the native api in a way similar to say java?" - by Bert64 (520050) on Friday October 12, @08:34PM (#20962091)
Well, it has a GOOD 90% I would say, of the Win32 API natively "wrapped" (so you do not have to do what you do in VB using DECLARE statements (pre VB.NET VB's that is) to access & marshall lib/DLL functions...
.275 .600
.271 .503
.266 .269 .292
.012 .069 .072 .445 .650
.exe does, so it's not just interpreted "p-code" like it was in VB4 in 32-bit versions, but it's not the same as the VC++ compiler in that for instance it does not unroll & optimize loops for example in VB5, where it does in VC++)
HOWEVER, if you get a 3rd party lib, you can do pretty much the same using extern/std libs & their calling conventions (pascal vs. std. C type) & use them.
Also, I can tell you that in Visual Basic Programmer's Journal Sept. 1997 issue "Inside the VB5 Compiler", when I had only been coding for Win32 for 2 yrs. or so that Delphi "knocked the chocolate" out of MSVB4 & MSVB5, as well as MSVC++ AND Java (Symantec Java Cafe & MSVJ++) across the boards almost totally on many of the tests run (results below):
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MATH PROCESSING (in seconds of processing time taken (lower is better/faster)):
Delphi - 1.523
Java Cafe - 2.400
MsVC++ - 3.600
MsVB5 - 7.871
MsVJ++ - 6.100
STRING PROCESSING (in seconds of processing time taken (lower is better/faster)):
Delphi -
MsVC++ -
MsVB5 - 4.091
Java Cafe - 77.000
MsVJ++ - 88.000
GRAPHICS METHODS (in seconds of processing time taken (lower is better/faster)):
MsVC++ -
Delphi -
MsVJ++ - 1.210
Java Cafe - 2.220
MsVB5 - 3.259
API GRAPHICS METHODS (in seconds of processing time taken (lower is better/faster)):
MsVC++ -
Delphi -
MsVB5 -
MsVJ++ - 1.260
Java Cafe - 2.220
TEXT BOX FORM LOADS (in seconds of processing time taken (lower is better/faster)):
MsVC++ -
Delphi -
MsVB5 -
Java Cafe -
MsVJ++ -
ActiveX Form Loads (java could not do this then, can it now? MSVB won here (.114), Delphi 2nd (.495) & MSVC++ is 3rd (.778)):
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Java is not remotely in the same league, code performance-wise, as MSVC++ & Delphi, especially. Math & Strings work probably represents the TRUEST TEST OF ALL THOUGH, as far as multiplatform considerations, because every program does them & DELPHI EXCELS ON THOSE (doubling the performance of MSVC++ in them both in fact, & doing the best overall in fact of all the languages tested on a Win32 platform).
(IN VB5's when VB got a true "compiler" in VB5 & they wanted to test its performance vs. older VB versions & competing languages on a variety of varied tasks (VB5 got a watered down MSVC++ 5.x really) instead of being totally runtime driven, now iirc, the forms oontrols are only, the rest the actual
There, as you can see, that overall?
Delphi swept the floor with the lot of them!
(As far as performance of code created (and, the advantage of "RAD" (tapid application design) style IDE (integrated development environs) creation of interfaces, which alone is much faster to do than it was back then in VC++ using its "reso