Selling Linux to Windows Users

[Bart Silverstrim]

Albert Charron wrote:

> Didn't have a virus for years on my windows systems... The machines I 
> manage at work either... What you have to do: install the updates and 
> run a decent anti-malware... not that hard to do... BTW, I've been 
> rootkited a couple of times on Linux (not Ubuntu tho)

I've had a number of cases where "anti-malware" ended up screwing with 
user's email clients and some cases stopped working properly because of 
update issues...

Plus they do add overhead on the system.

>> 12 Lock my kid out of all the spots and programs that I want him 
>> locked out of.
>>   
> You can remove right to execute applications to specific users in 
> Windows too... Through NTFS permissions, through Global policies, 
> through permissions in the Registry...

That's kind of an insane way to do it if you want to actually secure a 
system that way. Just in case I missed it, how do you lock them out of 
executing specific EXE's from policies? And hopefully you don't also 
lock out things that actually allow you to *use* the computer. I've 
worked in a school that has systems "secured" and it was so locked down 
that most of the time students brought their own systems or wouldn't use 
the labs unless they had to. They were simply unusable and frustrating 
to work on.

At first I thought I was totally clueless on that when I read your post 
but there are products aimed specifically at disallowing and allowing 
specific executables (I know Faronics has a complementary product to 
their Deep Freeze software that does something like this), so if the 
functionality is that easy in Windows why would there be products to do 
this?

> If I delete a software, I don't want to run it! Again, what's the point? 
> I've never tried that on Linux either!

Yeah, that is a rather valid point...why would you want it to keep 
running and risk corruption just because it didn't close a file handle?