Windows was created as a SINGLE-user system. One user per computer. Then Microsoft, looking at a system that had little to no security to begin with, made its products more "competitive" by hooking directly to the operating system core that only they knew. (How else could a mediocre design like Word take the market from something as well-planned as WordPerfect?). Windows NT is an immature GUI Unix slowly being invented into a full Unix by Microsoft, but very young, yet, and different enough that many, many exploits exist. So, Windows is wide open to exploits, Windows NT is sort-of secure till you add Microsoft Software that DEPENDS on hooking directly into the operating system core. That's why there are 50,000 or so exploits, varying from trojans to worms to virii. With one system having bolt-on security as an afterthought, and the other having middleware that runs in privileged mode and executes shell commands, the security is somewhere between laughable and atrocious.
I recommend to all my friends that if they must use Windows, then use it locally. Use Linux to connect to the internet and to intranets. If not, the next site you open with MSIE might just destroy your computer in a single step. The next attached (*.xls)spreadsheet you open from your email might just send itself out to all your friends on all your address lists and then repartition your fixed disks without any warning.
McAfee antivirus is available for Linux. It checks incoming files for windows exploits. I suppose using Linux as a workgroup firewall and gateway is becoming a rather common practice, since McAfee sees a market there. Of course, the fools once tried to claim they discovered "bliss", too.
Civileme
John May wrote:
Exactly that is why you can't be infected by a Winblows virus on a Mac
platform and vice versa. It also is the same reason you can't run Winbloze
apps in Linux without an emulator. BTW, haven't seen too many viruses for
Linux lately and how many are there for Winblows, umm ... around 50,000?*************************************
Original message from: Dan Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Toby Sheets wrote:
>
>> Is Linux susceptible to the same virii that Windoze is?
>
>No, because viruses are written for a particular processor/OS platform,
>and none of the calls upon which a DOS/windows virus would rely are
>present in Linux. Of course, if you're running WINE or VMWare, that's
>another story...
>
>--
>Dan Brown, KE6MKS, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good
>with ketchup.
-- Rejoice, the wait for Windows 2000 is over! http://www.ms-windows-2000.com/
