The Ubuntu Experiment

[Steve C. Lamb]

On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 09:10:18PM -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> Not remotely true.  Windows is a target, because it's the easiest - both
> because of the software and because of the volume.  But if you can get
> people to install software without any regards to safeguards, linux is no
> less vulnerable than any other OS.  People continually point out that "you
> can only trash your own files" (which is of course only true if you can't
> get them to install it as root).  Big deal - if its a single-user system it
> doesn't matter _whose_ files I'm corrupting.

    Yes, it does.  You're naive to think otherwise.  What's the difference?  I
have a heavily infected WinXP system sitting on my desk that I've been tasked
to get running again.  Chances are I'm going to have to wipe the hard drive
clean and start from scratch.  If I am dumb and let something in my home dir
which trashes my files then, even on a single user system, *the system is
still functional and you're able to perform some recovery of data using
uninfected portions of the system*.  That difference is HUGE for anyone who
has gone through it.

> Well, no, that's _our_ anecdotal evidence - at least as many posts agreed
> with me as with you, and there's plenty of backup from the magazine
> reviewers.

    Would those be the same reviewers who probably never use it in a
production environment... given their position as magazine reviewer and not
something like sysadmin?  Also might those "reviewers" be shills?  Sorry, but
that particular FUD was put to bed years ago.

-- 
         Steve C. Lamb         | I'm your priest, I'm your shrink, I'm your
       PGP Key: 1FC01004       | main connection to the switchboard of souls.
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