On Sunday 08 May 2005 15:40, you wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I tried to convince somebody I know to move to Linux at home and
> at work. I am myself an advocate user of Linux at work and at home.
>
> He works with a XP at work (a hightech company; however , he is
> not a programmer) ,and also XP at home.
>
> When listing the main advantages of Linux , the most important one
> I had thought of was security ; when you access the internet from a Linux
> machine, chances that you get a virus or spyware or someone will intrude
> your machine are smaller ; He answered that , when thinking in the long
> term (2-3 years) , as more people will use linux as a desktop,
> this can be easiy changed;
Possibly. However, one must understand that Linux is very different from
Windows from the security point of view and from other aspects. Linux
programs don't execute code from network resources by default as is so common
on Windows. Linux ships in distributions which supply security updates to all
installed Applications (not just the Microsoft ones). Linux has less services
open to the network by default. All of these make it more difficult to write
successful Linux malware. There has been no successful Linux virus and I
don't recall any spyware on such scale as in Windows. Worms are a
possibility, but it's certainly could not be worse than Windows.
> moreover, he claimed that since Linux is an open
> source,
> maybe it is even easier to develop viruses/spyware to it. In this point
> I did not know what to answer him. I am not a
> security expert; it could be that he is right in this point.
No it's not. Generally one should assume the attacker is familiar with the
internals of the program perfectly. It has to be made secure to such
full-knowledge attackers by taking the relevant security measures and writing
secure code. While sometimes having the source available can help in finding
exploits, many exploits were found in binary-only programs, sometimes much
more than many open-source counterparts.
>
> Other Linux benefits that I thought of is that since Linux is open source,
> all applications he will probably need are handy for download; in winodws
> you cannot download office ....
>
You can download OpenOffice and a lot of other open-source software or
freeware for Windows as well. The advantages for that in Linux are:
1. Software comes in packages, with dependencies. No DLL Hell, and easy
removal and maintenance.
2. You can install a package along with all of its dependencies using a
package manager (apt-get, urpmi, yum, emerge etc.)
> He argued that migrating to Linux will takes time because you need to learn
> many new things;
It takes some time, but with desktop environments like KDE, system
configuration tools, and some help from online forums and knowledgable
people, it shouldn't take too long. Linux is not hard to use, and there are
many things that are analogous to their Windows counterparts.
> The security solution of XP (the XP firewall) and
> the free antispyware sw are enough for him; And he isn't convinced
> that it is worth to inverst time in migating to Linux.
>
I wouldn't trust these things if I were him.
> Are there other Linux benefits which I can pose for moving to Linux ?
> (except the idea of moving to open and free source).
>
Here are some more:
1. Open Source - You can always customize an application yourself (add
feature, fix bugs, know where to report them, etc.) or hire someone to do
that for you.
2. Price - no need to pay for anything including upgrades. All software can be
installed from the base system.
3. Community - the Linux and Open Source Community is very fun, supportive.
There are many resources available for getting help or for learning more.
4. Powerful Command Line and Scripting.
5. Integrability - everything can be made to work together.
6. Eye Candy/Themes/Skins/etc.
7. Virtual Workspaces. (The MSVDM solution for Windows sucks ass).
These are just the things of the top of my head. I'll let you know if I think
of more. Right now I have to go to the Hamakor Assembly.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
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