That sounds reason -SLAP- What was I thinking? You are pulling my leg, right Dustin? You compare this little DoS problem to Windoze remote root exploits and up2date or apt-get to Windoze updater and then declare "failure" of the free software desktop? There's no comparison and your declaration of desktop security failure is premature.
There's a whole magnitudes of difference between the windoze exploits and those on free software because free software uses a sane system of unprivileged users, where Windoze has email programs auto executing code as root. There are qualitative and quantitative differences in the fixes as well. Windoze updates have been shown to consume excessive bandwidth, are difficult to cache and are generally trojans themselves that force unrelated program changes and new EULAs on their victims. I have not updated the machine sending this email in months and it's got 30 MBs of upgrades waiting. I can cache those packages so that my other boxes don't have to tax the internet. There are also tools for pushing the upgrades through a network, if I were inclined to use them. I trust these tools, they are efficient and painless. On the Windoze side, I've heard of 500MB service packs, is that true? Yet they fail to fix all the bugs and they never can do as good a job as the distributed effort of free software. The proof is best seen on web servers, where Apache has a majority share. The deployment is there and the targets are attractive. Do we see the same kinds of break ins that we see on Microsoft as we do on Apache? Responsible administrators can keep those up better than they can Microsoft boxes and that's one of the big reasons for the move, isn't it? I'll be very surprised if free software does not overcome the problems created by Microsoft's abusive closed source business. Microsoft has done much to blame the user for faults in their software and in their system of distribution. The charges will ring hollow as more people adopt free software. The chances are high that corporate networks and home desktops alike will be more frequently updated and more secure under free software. On 2003.05.04 10:02 Dustin Puryear wrote: > I read that there was another vulnerability found in Evolution: > http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2003/04/21/insecurities.html#xim > > It appears to me that the Linux desktop is quickly finding itself in the > same position as the Windows desktop when it comes to security. Microsoft > has done well recently in issuing patches for vulnerabilities and bugs, but > users typically don't apply them. Is the same going to be true for Linux > users? And if so can we now compare the failure of the Linux desktop with > the failure of the Windows desktop in terms of security as an apples to > apples comparison? > > --- > Dustin Puryear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Puryear Information Technology > Windows, UNIX, and IT Consulting > http://www.puryear-it.com > >
