You're welcome :) While OS X comes from one company, and Windows comes from one company, Linux comes from many companies in the form of what are called distributions. You can build your own distribution from scratch if you want and distribute it without cost (ignoring cds, marketing, bandwidth etc).
SuSE are a German distro who were just bought by Novell, I've long been a fan. While SuSE is a for-profit business, much like Apple, Debian is a volunteer organisation with many ideas on freedom. It's also one of the best mainstream distros out there with many advantages over the commercial equivalents. Linux is not alone in this world though, there's another popular UNIX clone called BSD (which Darwin, the guts of OS X is a variant of). The most common variants (until Darwin) are FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. Now I'll get back to the subject of the thread, security. There is a certain amount of security in being different. I used to happily run SuSE boxes next to Red Hat servers (American distro of Linux) and while the Red Hat boxes dropped like flies from attacks, mine were fine. Nowadays SuSE gets hit easily too. I find it very tempting to advise ignoring the virus programs and just not using the mainstream programs. I go to extremes on this by using mid-80s non-GUI tools to check my email (though there are other advantages), but if you chose something like Firefox instead of Safari, and Thunderbird instead of AppleMail, I'd suspect that you'd happily survive the first problems on OS X. They may even be too popular and you'd need to choose something else (OmniWeb?) :) On Windows this approach makes a lot of sense. Outlook and IE are the two main holes when it comes down to viruses, and just not using them is the best way to be safe, sod the virus checkers. You also need to make sure the user has a certain level of education in terms of computer-use+paranoia. Nothing we've not heard on the list before: * Don't open attachments unless you're expecting them. * Distrust email from strangers. * Don't agree to things that popup; instead hit the X or use Alt-F4 (Windows). * etc etc. For years, my home has been virus-free by following this mentality. The only bad time we've had is when I joined the company VPN to do work and was infected by the company computers (VPN's are bad m'kay). At the moment, it's not an approach you'd need to worry about too much in the Apple world. All of OS X is 'something different', so no worries for now, but I still have a healthy distrust of using Safari and Mail. That makes it four-pence now :) Hen On Tue, 7 Dec 2004, Marta Edie wrote: > Henri, now there is what I call an explanation! Thanks ever so much. Now, > don't > get me wrong, I hardly grasp what it means to change from SuSe to a Debian > ..... etc. ,, but your explanation gave me a better picture on hackers and > viruses in general and how they are generated and how they differ.- > And this to Harry : I don't take things personal, I am much too old for that! > I simply meant that the upgrading issue had actually been at the beginning > of the thread on viruses, and your post somehow out of sequence. > And my answer on the reason why we would need Virex or some such thing as > an insurance was meant for Jeff who brought up the question why Virex would > even be needed if Apple thinks Macs are so safe.-- Jeff, we know how much you > love your PCs. > Marta | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be January 25. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | List posting address: <mailto:macgroup at erdos.math.louisville.edu> | List Web page: <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>
