Jim Cheetham wrote:
I'd say over 99%. Until you start hosting services, you don't have too much to worry about. To the best of my knowledge, spyware doesn't work, viruses will have a hard time accessing you outlook address book, and there's no pesky activex to cause you any problems. Add to that a basic router to firewall you, and you're pretty safe.On Feb 7, 2005, at 8:17 PM, Lindsay wrote:
I have been of the understanding that Linux is relatively virus and intruder safe. How accurate is my understanding of this?
Pretty spot on.
There are no "virus" types of program that will bother you.
There are "trojan" programs around, just don't run anything you didn't get from a trustworthy place - you can always ask here first.
There *are* frequent security vulnerabilities in many network-facing services - but under Ubuntu, none of these are enabled by default. Also, as long as you run the package manager to "update" and "upgrade" regularly, the known vulnerabilities will be patched for you automatically. Generally within a few days of becoming known, Ubuntu will have a fix available.
(As usual, these statements are "99%" accurate ... nitpickers welcome :-)
-jim
Once you start running web services, secure shell, ftp servers, and so on, then you need to be more careful. But of course, by then you'll have the knowledg to be so.
Cheers,
Steve
Only been hacked once in 15 years, and that was my fault ( a guessable password ). And if that's not fatal, I don't know what is.
