Seriously, though...my family all runs Linux now thanks to some convincing on my part, and now I can go home for a holiday from school and actually have a holiday...not a computer fixing party.
To quote my girlfriend when I asked her about it:
"It's easy to use. I haven't had to restart it because of freezing, windows don't close for no reason, and I don't get error messages. Why mess with something that works?"
Ok, I used to be an Apple hater. I really didn't like the company, I didn't like the products, and I was sick and freakin tired of hearing that the iPod was the only good mp3 player in the world.
So, when I decided I wanted a portable hard drive and music player in one, I looked at everything EXCEPT the iPod. In fact, I flat out refused to buy an iPod. I looked at the iRiver, the iAudio, and the Creative Nomad. (does every player need an "i" in front of it?). And you know what happened? I couldn't find a single player that did the following: play music, mount as a USB mass storage device, and have an interface that didnt suck. They all either had a horrifyingly proprietary setup (needs drivers just to mount it as a drive), or they had an interface that was either crappy, or just plain cheap (I'm talking to you, iRiver).
Finally, my dad gave me an iPod for my birthday, and you know what? I couldn't find anything to whine about. It did everything I wanted it to do, and it's engineered really well, and it was smaller, to boot. It even made me have an open mind, and I've come to respect Apple products. What I'm trying to say is, yeah, the iPod isn't the only player on the market, and even I'm sick of hearing about it, but for god's sake, somebody, PLEASE, make an alternative that just plays music and acts as a hard drive. Is that too much to ask?
and here I thought nothing exciting ever happened in my old home town of Meriden. Just think, we not only have drug dealers and guys that open fire on playgrounds with uzis, we even have our share of computer criminals. Honestly, I wouldn't have given anyone in my town the credit to operate a computer in the first place.
I can't wait to call home and tell my parents we're famous...Meriden made slashdot! Woo Hoo!
Actually, my experience with Linux was completely the opposite, and I started using it with absolutely zero experience and no one to really guide me. Distro choice may have been a large part of what caused you to come away with such a bad feeling overall.
I personally feel that Mandrake linux is a better choice for a lot of applications, it's got a free download version that I run at home and is also used on production servers at work, and it has well done and understandable graphical config tools, a really easy installer, and great hardware support. In addition, package management is excellent.
It absolutely can be done, and you dont have to be a 'sysadmin' to use it. I say that with confidence, because my mother (a normal end user who had never seen anything but Windows) uses Mandrake Linux 10 at her home. She had no trouble setting up her dsl connection, printer, etc using the Mandrake config tools.
Debian isnt the friendliest distro around, and with Fedora being a testing ground for Red Hat Enterprise, broken stuff happens. It's a shame you had a bad experience, but when I installed Mandrake for the first time in january, (my first time using Linux) everything "just worked" out of the box, and that's why I started using Linux in the first place.
Rather than starting flame wars or arguments over permissions...I'll endeavour to answer the actual question. First, Spybot Search and Destroy now contains Tea Timer, which will actually prevent installation of spyware components and warn of incoming spyware. This is at least worth mentioning.
Second, Java Cool Software has both Spyware Guard and Spyware Blaster. Both are free (at least for personal use), and both do a pretty good job of preventing the installation of spyware components. Spyware Blaster is specialized for blacklisting bad Active X controls and the like, but also has protection for Firefox vulnerabilities. Spyware Guard is a background guard to warn of incoming spyware and prevent some installations.
Actually, Firefox is not heavier, IE just has all of its modules loaded at startup in the registry. It's using plenty of resources, they're just transparent to the user. This is exactly why IE opens so quickly and performs as well as it does, because Microsoft specifically designed it to be integrated with the OS.
When you start Windows, you start IE, loading I believe somewhere in the realm of 20mb of modules and libraries into memory that are tied directly to IE.
I have never seen or heard of anything like that with LCD monitors, however, the other sysadmins where I work have noticed that Windows XP with Service Pack 2 has been acting like that for them on their Gateway laptops. Dont know if that's related, but it might be.
It actually points out that rather than just searching files by name, the new search would let you search something the way you search on google...
i.e. I want to configure my ftp server, so I type in "configure ftp server" and it returns an appropriate help document, or I search "foo" and it will search through my files for that phrase.
that's how I see it working, in any case, not just "find -name filename" because that would be reinventing the wheel...that's what slocate and find are for, or "find files" on the K menu for gui stuff.
Am I the only person in the world who's had almost zero issues with linux and hardware? With the exception two wireless cards that had proprietary chipsets, I have had zero issues with linux and hardware. I've used Slackware 10, mandrake 9.2 and 10.0, Suse 9.1 pro, College Linux, RedHat 7.3, Slax, Knoppix, morphix, -lost count of the rest of them- on computers ranging from PII AOpen computers to my AMD64 desktop to my Dell Inspiron laptop.
Actually, I'll amend that, I haven't gotten any of the modems to work (never tried, not counting dial-up access among my needs).
When I did run into my first issue, with supporting a wireless card running a TI proprietary chipset(meant to double 802.11b to 22mbps ONLY with SMC hardware), I went online and purchased a cheap Netgear card that has proceeded to work on every single distro I've tried without even having to configure it, it just worked.
People complain about linux hardware support, but I do a heck of a lot less work after installing linux than I do installing Windows drivers after a reformat.
Thought it wont necessarily help with Sasser, if you get a blaster or similar type of RPC attack, you can bring up the Run box and type in "shutdown -a" and it will prevent the machine from being rebooted by blaster or welchia or the like.
I used this at work all the time to get the patch installed so we could clean and patch the PCs.
Another suggestion, albeit an obvious one, is to put the most essential stuff on a USB drive or mini CD, and just slap on those before you do plug in the network. I made a "SasserAssassin" tool (in C++) that just killed and deleted any running Sasser copies and then applied the patch from MS. (only limitation is it wont delete system restore copies of it)
This is how I always worked with computers at my university. There's no need to go through the hassle of downloading all the updates to CD, since all you really need are the major ones. In addition, there is http://autopatcher.com which handles that for you pretty nicely, including some extra goodies. Hope some of this info helps.
Slashdot Mirror
How exactly is a product (Entempo Spirit) an "iPod killer for christmas" if it isn't due out until January 31st?
Or did they mean christmas next year...
-Jay
If no one buys anything from spam, where's the incentive to advertize with it? :)
-Jay
Stop buying crap from them. Seriously. If it wasnt' profitable for them, they wouldn't do it.
-Jay
None.
Seriously, though...my family all runs Linux now thanks to some convincing on my part, and now I can go home for a holiday from school and actually have a holiday...not a computer fixing party.
To quote my girlfriend when I asked her about it:
"It's easy to use. I haven't had to restart it because of freezing, windows don't close for no reason, and I don't get error messages. Why mess with something that works?"
-Jay
Ok, I used to be an Apple hater. I really didn't like the company, I didn't like the products, and I was sick and freakin tired of hearing that the iPod was the only good mp3 player in the world.
So, when I decided I wanted a portable hard drive and music player in one, I looked at everything EXCEPT the iPod. In fact, I flat out refused to buy an iPod. I looked at the iRiver, the iAudio, and the Creative Nomad. (does every player need an "i" in front of it?). And you know what happened? I couldn't find a single player that did the following: play music, mount as a USB mass storage device, and have an interface that didnt suck. They all either had a horrifyingly proprietary setup (needs drivers just to mount it as a drive), or they had an interface that was either crappy, or just plain cheap (I'm talking to you, iRiver).
Finally, my dad gave me an iPod for my birthday, and you know what? I couldn't find anything to whine about. It did everything I wanted it to do, and it's engineered really well, and it was smaller, to boot. It even made me have an open mind, and I've come to respect Apple products. What I'm trying to say is, yeah, the iPod isn't the only player on the market, and even I'm sick of hearing about it, but for god's sake, somebody, PLEASE, make an alternative that just plays music and acts as a hard drive. Is that too much to ask?
-Jay
and here I thought nothing exciting ever happened in my old home town of Meriden. Just think, we not only have drug dealers and guys that open fire on playgrounds with uzis, we even have our share of computer criminals. Honestly, I wouldn't have given anyone in my town the credit to operate a computer in the first place.
I can't wait to call home and tell my parents we're famous...Meriden made slashdot! Woo Hoo!
-Jay
Actually, my experience with Linux was completely the opposite, and I started using it with absolutely zero experience and no one to really guide me. Distro choice may have been a large part of what caused you to come away with such a bad feeling overall.
I personally feel that Mandrake linux is a better choice for a lot of applications, it's got a free download version that I run at home and is also used on production servers at work, and it has well done and understandable graphical config tools, a really easy installer, and great hardware support. In addition, package management is excellent.
It absolutely can be done, and you dont have to be a 'sysadmin' to use it. I say that with confidence, because my mother (a normal end user who had never seen anything but Windows) uses Mandrake Linux 10 at her home. She had no trouble setting up her dsl connection, printer, etc using the Mandrake config tools.
Debian isnt the friendliest distro around, and with Fedora being a testing ground for Red Hat Enterprise, broken stuff happens. It's a shame you had a bad experience, but when I installed Mandrake for the first time in january, (my first time using Linux) everything "just worked" out of the box, and that's why I started using Linux in the first place.
Mandrake Linux DownloadsRather than starting flame wars or arguments over permissions...I'll endeavour to answer the actual question. First, Spybot Search and Destroy now contains Tea Timer, which will actually prevent installation of spyware components and warn of incoming spyware. This is at least worth mentioning.
Second, Java Cool Software has both Spyware Guard and Spyware Blaster. Both are free (at least for personal use), and both do a pretty good job of preventing the installation of spyware components. Spyware Blaster is specialized for blacklisting bad Active X controls and the like, but also has protection for Firefox vulnerabilities. Spyware Guard is a background guard to warn of incoming spyware and prevent some installations.
-Jay
Actually, Firefox is not heavier, IE just has all of its modules loaded at startup in the registry. It's using plenty of resources, they're just transparent to the user. This is exactly why IE opens so quickly and performs as well as it does, because Microsoft specifically designed it to be integrated with the OS.
When you start Windows, you start IE, loading I believe somewhere in the realm of 20mb of modules and libraries into memory that are tied directly to IE.
-Jay
I have never seen or heard of anything like that with LCD monitors, however, the other sysadmins where I work have noticed that Windows XP with Service Pack 2 has been acting like that for them on their Gateway laptops. Dont know if that's related, but it might be.
It actually points out that rather than just searching files by name, the new search would let you search something the way you search on google...
i.e. I want to configure my ftp server, so I type in "configure ftp server" and it returns an appropriate help document, or I search "foo" and it will search through my files for that phrase.
that's how I see it working, in any case, not just "find -name filename" because that would be reinventing the wheel...that's what slocate and find are for, or "find files" on the K menu for gui stuff.
Am I the only person in the world who's had almost zero issues with linux and hardware? With the exception two wireless cards that had proprietary chipsets, I have had zero issues with linux and hardware. I've used Slackware 10, mandrake 9.2 and 10.0, Suse 9.1 pro, College Linux, RedHat 7.3, Slax, Knoppix, morphix, -lost count of the rest of them- on computers ranging from PII AOpen computers to my AMD64 desktop to my Dell Inspiron laptop.
Actually, I'll amend that, I haven't gotten any of the modems to work (never tried, not counting dial-up access among my needs).
When I did run into my first issue, with supporting a wireless card running a TI proprietary chipset(meant to double 802.11b to 22mbps ONLY with SMC hardware), I went online and purchased a cheap Netgear card that has proceeded to work on every single distro I've tried without even having to configure it, it just worked.
People complain about linux hardware support, but I do a heck of a lot less work after installing linux than I do installing Windows drivers after a reformat.
Maybe I'm lucky **shrugs**
Thought it wont necessarily help with Sasser, if you get a blaster or similar type of RPC attack, you can bring up the Run box and type in "shutdown -a" and it will prevent the machine from being rebooted by blaster or welchia or the like.
e xe and http://elon.edu/student/jaleman/SasserAssassin2000 .exe
I used this at work all the time to get the patch installed so we could clean and patch the PCs.
Another suggestion, albeit an obvious one, is to put the most essential stuff on a USB drive or mini CD, and just slap on those before you do plug in the network. I made a "SasserAssassin" tool (in C++) that just killed and deleted any running Sasser copies and then applied the patch from MS. (only limitation is it wont delete system restore copies of it)
Anyone is welcome to download a copy of it at http://jayloden.com/SasserAssasinXP.exe or http://jayloden.com/SasserAssassin2000.exe (pick your OS version, obviously) if it helps you out.
This is how I always worked with computers at my university. There's no need to go through the hassle of downloading all the updates to CD, since all you really need are the major ones. In addition, there is http://autopatcher.com which handles that for you pretty nicely, including some extra goodies. Hope some of this info helps.
-Jay
note: just in case, I've got a backup copy of SasserAssassin located at http://elon.edu/student/jaleman/SasserAssassinXP.