They're saying that the distributions they tested were as slow or slower than current versions of windows on the same hardware. So while modern linux distributions may still install on such machines, the result won't be very useable with the default settings (kde for instance, just try kde 3 on a 486 with 16mb).
What they don't take into account, is distributions which are actually designed for such hardware.
Another interesting point, and the opposite of this argument, would be to try the latest versions of both windows and linux on ultra modern hardware... I tried to install the 64bit version of XP and several 64bit versions of linux on an athlon64 desktop system i have here, the results were quite amusing...
Modern linux distro's supported everything out of the box, and got the system up and running with no fuss.. XP x64 edition needed me to load SATA drivers from floppy before it would even install, i had to hunt around for ages to find a floppy drive, and then hunt around for the drivers since the motherboard only shipped with a floppy containing 32bit drivers.. Once installed, it didn't support my videocard, sound or NIC, i had to manually go and download drivers on another machine and bring them in on USB token.
Virtually any modern machine won't work properly out of the box with XP, you'l always need to install additional drivers for something, usually the video... Otherwise you get the generic VESA drivers for video, which are uselessly slow.
Many browsers run on lots of different OS's.. In that respect which OS it runs on is largely irrelevant. Microsoft rely on people depending on windows because of it's proprietary nature, and the fact they can't run the apps they have on other platforms because windows isn't compatible with anything else... If the OS is unimportant, who will pay $100 for windows when they can get linux for free? You can even get distributions like knoppix which don't need to be installed, boot from CD just like a games console does, and include a browser.
But there is no monopoly, because the code is open anyone can learn about it, contribute to it and make money supporting it.. Large companies may choose IBM because they're a large trusted name, but there's no reason why a lot of smaller shops couldn't exist, and competition would be good for the end user.
But FOSS isn't a single target microsoft can attack, they don't understand it.. So they attack the biggest FOSS supporting business they can find, IBM.
It's funny how something which is touted as being so good 8 years ago, is now advertised as not being up to the task simply because they have something new to sell... Anything it could do 8 years ago, it can still do now... Most organisations are still doing the same things now that they were 8 years ago, so why bother changing?
On the other hand, people could argue that NT4 was never really up to the task and all the marketting was just lies, but the same could also be said about current versions.
My machines (gentoo linux) upgraded fine, and all my settings/bookmarks were updated too... It detected my plugins and tried to find updated 1.5-compatible versions, but failed to do so for a couple... These plugins still sit in the list, marked as disabled, and will be updated automatically once compatible versions become available.
In the case of clamav or other antivirus stuff, your more likely to be running it under windows..
As for the updated ones, there are far more updated vulns for unix because the vulnerability is discovered, investigated, tested on other unixish platforms etc, and the entire discovery and fixing process is openly documented..
On windows however, a vulnerability is discovered and published, then you wait while things happen internally at microsoft, then theres a patch (or perhaps not, in many cases).
It's 802.11G, but B worked fine for most cases too, only some of the higher bitrate movies would start stalling.. I got about 4-6mb from 802.11b depending on distance from the AP.. With 802.11G i get about 20-30mb which is more than sufficient even for DVD's.
Bzip2 is an optional program included with many linux distributions, but which can easily be removed.. Bzip2 can optionally be installed on windows, but is never there by default. Bzip2 can optionally be installed on almost any other OS, but is often not included by default.
A vulnerability in Bzip2 is not a vulnerability in linux/unix as a whole, but it may be a vulnerability in a particular distribution.
But many linux distributions blur the distinction between third party and core OS... Linux distributions come with a large wealth of software, while windows comes with a comparatively minimal set. How would a linux distribution fare when stripped down to the same level as windows? and not to mention the fact that virtually anything can be removed from a given linux distro, whereas windows has lots of components which can't be removed/replaced.
Well there's the diversity among unixes.. A single worm is unlikely to affect such a large proportion of users, since they will be spread out among different unixes and different distributions of linux etc.. Windows on the other hand, has a few distinct versions which are easily identifiable and easy to target in exploits.. The dcom worms for instance, differentiated between XP and 2000 and used appropriate parameters.
Well, a hole in a php app could exist on windows too.. Apache and PHP can easily be installed on windows. Infact there are many such vulnerabilities.. There are also some, like the shell:// vuln that was attributed to firefox, but was actually a vulnerability in the core windows os and therefore wasn't exploitable through firefox on any other platform.
It's easy to find a crash-scenario without the sourcecode, but to actually determine if the vulnerability is exploitable or not takes a lot longer, and is much easier to find in the sourcecode.
This survey lumps "UNIX" in together, meaning solaris, linux, *BSD, AIX, IRIX, Tru64, OSX and whatever else.. Some of these OS's are abandoned by their vendors (IRIX, Tru64) and aren't undergoing much active development.. A much fairer comparison would be between actual off-the-shelf distributions of a given OS, instead of lumping everything together.. And it should also take into account the amount of bundled software (more bundled software, more chance of a vulnerability) and possibly do a comparison between each OS with all the optional components removed (baseline vulnerabilities)
Well, i`m sure some of the tougher or thicker laptops could stop bullets, especially lower velocity ones.. Next time i get the chance, i might take some old dead laptops to a shooting range and do a test on them.. Actually it might be interesting to do a study on what hardware truly is bulletproof and what isn't.
Well upgrading to the latest version of word will cost a lot more than upgrading to openoffice.. There are about the same level of differences between old and new versions of word, as there are between word and openoffice so any training costs would be very similar.. On the other hand, they don't need to pay for openoffice and can easily install it on as many machines as they have.. Also, the latest version of word no longer runs on older versions of windows (NT4, 9x etc) whereas openoffice does, so upgrading word may also require upgrading windows, at more cost.
Which is why we have things like UserMode Linux, Qemu and Vmware... Very usefull for quick testing to weed out major problems, before more thoroughly testing on real hardware...
Also i tend to test new kernels on sparc, by using boot net.. It retrieves the kernel from a TFTP server so i just need to copy the new test kernel to the appropriate filename on the TFTP and the sparc will try to boot it.
Well, what redhat/ibm/etc make from support, seems to fund a lot of their developers.. They maintain, improve and bugfix the software that they support, and if you want extra features you can pay for them.. Because the development model is distributed, companies benefit from work done by each other, so each company needs less developers.. You seem to assume that a single company has to develop an entire product themselves, which is the case for proprietary software.. In a distributed model like this, improvements get shared so the development work is spread between multiple support-providing companies. This also prevents a single company from taking the product in a direction potentially undesireable to users.
Well custom development is more closely related to support, your paying people to actively produce (and later maintain) that software.. And that for sure will continue, your paying people to provide a service, and those people will have to actually work to provide that service. I feel very much ripped off by shrink wrapped software, where the people who did work on it have long since moved on and yet we're still expected to pay top whack for it.
And in a free market all software would end up being sold at it's true value, which is also pretty minimal. The only way to make money would be in support contracts, and minimal profits from distribution/packaging.
Most sales come from corporate users, and corporate users are also more likely to buy support.. Joe enduser is not likely to buy support, and is also likely to copy any software his friends have.. Selling software to end consumers is a lot of hassle, and far less profitable than selling to corporate users, so these companies don't sell to end users, they give it to them for free.
And here we have a perfect example of proprietary software stifling innovation.. If it weren't for closed source apps like flash, people would have migrated to pure 64bit machines years ago.
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They're saying that the distributions they tested were as slow or slower than current versions of windows on the same hardware.
So while modern linux distributions may still install on such machines, the result won't be very useable with the default settings (kde for instance, just try kde 3 on a 486 with 16mb).
What they don't take into account, is distributions which are actually designed for such hardware.
Another interesting point, and the opposite of this argument, would be to try the latest versions of both windows and linux on ultra modern hardware...
I tried to install the 64bit version of XP and several 64bit versions of linux on an athlon64 desktop system i have here, the results were quite amusing...
Modern linux distro's supported everything out of the box, and got the system up and running with no fuss..
XP x64 edition needed me to load SATA drivers from floppy before it would even install, i had to hunt around for ages to find a floppy drive, and then hunt around for the drivers since the motherboard only shipped with a floppy containing 32bit drivers..
Once installed, it didn't support my videocard, sound or NIC, i had to manually go and download drivers on another machine and bring them in on USB token.
Virtually any modern machine won't work properly out of the box with XP, you'l always need to install additional drivers for something, usually the video... Otherwise you get the generic VESA drivers for video, which are uselessly slow.
Many browsers run on lots of different OS's.. In that respect which OS it runs on is largely irrelevant.
Microsoft rely on people depending on windows because of it's proprietary nature, and the fact they can't run the apps they have on other platforms because windows isn't compatible with anything else...
If the OS is unimportant, who will pay $100 for windows when they can get linux for free? You can even get distributions like knoppix which don't need to be installed, boot from CD just like a games console does, and include a browser.
But there is no monopoly, because the code is open anyone can learn about it, contribute to it and make money supporting it.. Large companies may choose IBM because they're a large trusted name, but there's no reason why a lot of smaller shops couldn't exist, and competition would be good for the end user.
But FOSS isn't a single target microsoft can attack, they don't understand it..
So they attack the biggest FOSS supporting business they can find, IBM.
It's funny how something which is touted as being so good 8 years ago, is now advertised as not being up to the task simply because they have something new to sell...
Anything it could do 8 years ago, it can still do now... Most organisations are still doing the same things now that they were 8 years ago, so why bother changing?
On the other hand, people could argue that NT4 was never really up to the task and all the marketting was just lies, but the same could also be said about current versions.
My machines (gentoo linux) upgraded fine, and all my settings/bookmarks were updated too...
It detected my plugins and tried to find updated 1.5-compatible versions, but failed to do so for a couple... These plugins still sit in the list, marked as disabled, and will be updated automatically once compatible versions become available.
In the case of clamav or other antivirus stuff, your more likely to be running it under windows..
As for the updated ones, there are far more updated vulns for unix because the vulnerability is discovered, investigated, tested on other unixish platforms etc, and the entire discovery and fixing process is openly documented..
On windows however, a vulnerability is discovered and published, then you wait while things happen internally at microsoft, then theres a patch (or perhaps not, in many cases).
It's 802.11G, but B worked fine for most cases too, only some of the higher bitrate movies would start stalling.. I got about 4-6mb from 802.11b depending on distance from the AP.. With 802.11G i get about 20-30mb which is more than sufficient even for DVD's.
Bzip2 is an optional program included with many linux distributions, but which can easily be removed..
Bzip2 can optionally be installed on windows, but is never there by default.
Bzip2 can optionally be installed on almost any other OS, but is often not included by default.
A vulnerability in Bzip2 is not a vulnerability in linux/unix as a whole, but it may be a vulnerability in a particular distribution.
But many linux distributions blur the distinction between third party and core OS...
Linux distributions come with a large wealth of software, while windows comes with a comparatively minimal set. How would a linux distribution fare when stripped down to the same level as windows? and not to mention the fact that virtually anything can be removed from a given linux distro, whereas windows has lots of components which can't be removed/replaced.
Well there's the diversity among unixes..
A single worm is unlikely to affect such a large proportion of users, since they will be spread out among different unixes and different distributions of linux etc..
Windows on the other hand, has a few distinct versions which are easily identifiable and easy to target in exploits.. The dcom worms for instance, differentiated between XP and 2000 and used appropriate parameters.
Well, a hole in a php app could exist on windows too.. Apache and PHP can easily be installed on windows. Infact there are many such vulnerabilities..
There are also some, like the shell:// vuln that was attributed to firefox, but was actually a vulnerability in the core windows os and therefore wasn't exploitable through firefox on any other platform.
It's easy to find a crash-scenario without the sourcecode, but to actually determine if the vulnerability is exploitable or not takes a lot longer, and is much easier to find in the sourcecode.
This survey lumps "UNIX" in together, meaning solaris, linux, *BSD, AIX, IRIX, Tru64, OSX and whatever else.. Some of these OS's are abandoned by their vendors (IRIX, Tru64) and aren't undergoing much active development..
A much fairer comparison would be between actual off-the-shelf distributions of a given OS, instead of lumping everything together.. And it should also take into account the amount of bundled software (more bundled software, more chance of a vulnerability) and possibly do a comparison between each OS with all the optional components removed (baseline vulnerabilities)
Well, i`m sure some of the tougher or thicker laptops could stop bullets, especially lower velocity ones.. Next time i get the chance, i might take some old dead laptops to a shooting range and do a test on them..
Actually it might be interesting to do a study on what hardware truly is bulletproof and what isn't.
Actually i regularly stream video over NFS over VPN over wireless (very convenient) with no problems..
Well upgrading to the latest version of word will cost a lot more than upgrading to openoffice..
There are about the same level of differences between old and new versions of word, as there are between word and openoffice so any training costs would be very similar..
On the other hand, they don't need to pay for openoffice and can easily install it on as many machines as they have..
Also, the latest version of word no longer runs on older versions of windows (NT4, 9x etc) whereas openoffice does, so upgrading word may also require upgrading windows, at more cost.
Which is why we have things like UserMode Linux, Qemu and Vmware... Very usefull for quick testing to weed out major problems, before more thoroughly testing on real hardware...
Also i tend to test new kernels on sparc, by using boot net.. It retrieves the kernel from a TFTP server so i just need to copy the new test kernel to the appropriate filename on the TFTP and the sparc will try to boot it.
Well, what redhat/ibm/etc make from support, seems to fund a lot of their developers.. They maintain, improve and bugfix the software that they support, and if you want extra features you can pay for them.. Because the development model is distributed, companies benefit from work done by each other, so each company needs less developers..
You seem to assume that a single company has to develop an entire product themselves, which is the case for proprietary software.. In a distributed model like this, improvements get shared so the development work is spread between multiple support-providing companies. This also prevents a single company from taking the product in a direction potentially undesireable to users.
Well custom development is more closely related to support, your paying people to actively produce (and later maintain) that software..
And that for sure will continue, your paying people to provide a service, and those people will have to actually work to provide that service. I feel very much ripped off by shrink wrapped software, where the people who did work on it have long since moved on and yet we're still expected to pay top whack for it.
And in a free market all software would end up being sold at it's true value, which is also pretty minimal. The only way to make money would be in support contracts, and minimal profits from distribution/packaging.
Most sales come from corporate users, and corporate users are also more likely to buy support.. Joe enduser is not likely to buy support, and is also likely to copy any software his friends have..
Selling software to end consumers is a lot of hassle, and far less profitable than selling to corporate users, so these companies don't sell to end users, they give it to them for free.
And here we have a perfect example of proprietary software stifling innovation.. If it weren't for closed source apps like flash, people would have migrated to pure 64bit machines years ago.
What DTP app do you use on windows? I've always stuck to macs for such purposes..
So complain, threaten to take them to NZ court.. They are breaking the laws of New-Zealand and should be fined/punished by the law enforcement there.