On 1/22/07, Eric Bohn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
In the US, I'm almost certain you wouldn't be able to get away with running Gentoo, and more specifically, Portage, the way you apparently do in a secure govt environment. There's probably a federal directive or regulation somewhere that prevents machines being run in govt organizations from using non-standard or officially unapproved technology and/or procedures, and for good reason...
I know of many universities, not only from Brazil, but around the world, that use Gentoo. There are many security features in portage, and I believe Gentoo servers and mirrors have some security also, else it would be too easy to compromise thousands of installations around the world, and no cracker would miss this opportunity. Non-standard and officially unapproved technology sounds more like "put someone in control of all tech used in the public sector of IT", more like antitrust than standardizing.
I've had Portage hose my Gentoo install twice before to the point that I could no longer run Portage, and I run stable, not testing. Using Portage you're putting yourself at the mercy of any Joe Schmoe with a proxy connection to a Gentoo server that wants to compromise your machine. Even most commercial organizations, for job critical computing, have administrators that establish mirror servers for software testing prior to internal distribution.
As I mentioned before, I don't think we are at the mercy of any cracker around by using Gentoo. Of course some level of security would be needed, any OS requires that, but lets not hijack this thread, as the OP was talking about DESKTOP installations.
It didn't sound like the OP was intending for anyone to do sys admin tasks with Gentoo either, I imagine that could prove to be risky using any Linux distro.
Yeah, that's one more reason for a Gentoo install. And just for the record, ANY OS needs sys admin tasks once in a while, if not for initial install, because of breakage, and believe me, I had my quota of breakage before using Gentoo. -- Daniel da Veiga Computer Operator - RS - Brazil -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCM/IT/P/O d-? s:- a? C++$ UBLA++ P+ L++ E--- W+++$ N o+ K- w O M- V- PS PE Y PGP- t+ 5 X+++ R+* tv b+ DI+++ D+ G+ e h+ r+ y++ ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ -- [email protected] mailing list
