Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: > 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...)
It won't work under Linux, because you don't have IE installed in Linux! (Or did I miss the implied smiley?) You can use IEs4Linux to run different versions of IE under Wine on 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! > Actually, far and away the best general purpose firewall on Windows is the built-in windows firewall - it is *much* better than any third-party addon (except perhaps ipfilter for windows), simply because it doesn't have a huge baggage of extra code to slow down the system and introduce new bugs and exploitable holes. As you say, however, iptables (properly configured) is much more secure. > 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. > _______________________________________________ vbox-users mailing list [email protected] http://vbox.innotek.de/mailman/listinfo/vbox-users
