David Brown wrote: > Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: >> Good advice, but sometimes had to follow. Sometimes you run into >> sites you have to access with IE. (Once that you have no choice >> about accessing.) I use a good hardware firewall at home, but it is >> a bit hard to manage that when traveling. On the other hand, I run >> Linux 90% of the time. Between having a user for accessing the >> Internet when traveling, and using a virtual machine for most of the >> Windows access, it is fairly safe. It will be better when I get my >> XP install converted to a virtual machine. (I need to put more >> memory into the laptop...) >> > > There are *very* few sites left that require IE - the difference between > different versions of IE is so big that it is extremely difficult to > make a website that works with both IE6 and IE7 and yet fails to work > with Webkit, Firefox and Opera. (Opera is particularly good for > imitating IE to fool websites - so much so that most website counters > miscount Opera users as IE users.) The only common exception is > corporate websites that use ActiveX. > > It is safe enough to use IE for specific websites that need it, as long > as you use a proper browser for general usage when you are not 100% sure > of the safety of the website you are accessing. > > And of course, with Linux a good firewall is not hard to get - a > well-configured iptables is as good a firewall as any hardware device > (many of which are Linux systems). Even with completely open iptables, > a typical Linux system is still more secure that a typical Windows > system with its software firewall enabled. > I run Firefox most of the time. When running Windows, I use the open in IE plug in. (I have not figured out how to use it under Linux...) Given a choice, I run Linux, especially when traveling. I trust IP Tables much more then the add-on Windows firewalls. Besides, it is much easier to have one firewall setting for the home network, and another, much more restrictive one for anywhere else. This can be done in Windows, but it is much more work!
Before firewall/routers became common for home use, I had a P-75 system running as a firewall and mail gateway. I think it had all of 32M of RAM. But it did the job, and the logs were fun to read. Mikkel -- Registered Linux User #16148 (http://counter.li.org/) _______________________________________________ vbox-users mailing list [email protected] http://vbox.innotek.de/mailman/listinfo/vbox-users
