Last week I did a post on the subject of Linux as a replacement, for the soon to be abandoned ( and very-very aged ) Windows XP. First off lets get something clear, XP is 13 years old, In a consumer and consumption based economy, this is truly unheard of. In the corporate world yeah, some systems are maintained for 20 years or longer, heck I know of a few outfit's still running IBM's OS/2, and that operating system predates Win XP by at least 6 or 7 years ( I really liked OS/2 and was dismayed when it lost the battle for Mainstream Desktop Usage King ages ago ) I originally wrote the post " ComputerLife : Is Linux Truly Virus Free ? : Ditching WinXP " because I know in financially hard times some folk's simply can not afford to purchase a new computer, and if the one they are currently using still function's why bother ? So I'm not going to go there again, however yesterday one of this blog's readers left a post in the comment's section I am happily ( with his/her permission ) going to Re-Post it here today so anyways from me to "Anonymous my phantom writer of the day" Thank you.
Comment From :
Anonymous said...
Because Linux is UNIX based and doesn't run in administrator / root supervisor by default doesn't mean it's not prey to viruses. But it is more secure at that level of access than Windows any day, especially XP.
By being an non-admin user in Gnome or KDE windows systems stops a lot of viruses getting in and installed due to lesser permissions that would infest windows XP easily, mainly because XP accounts by default are set at Administrator level during creation, that may be altered later but it's a big weakness for XP. Linux has some superiority there, and it's free, and the best part. Average users can still execute admin level tasks using the sudo command in a command line or entering the root password during installations / supervision in a GNOME / alternative windows environment so they still have maximum capability if they have that level of authority over a network / computer and it's very secure.
By being an non-admin user in Gnome or KDE windows systems stops a lot of viruses getting in and installed due to lesser permissions that would infest windows XP easily, mainly because XP accounts by default are set at Administrator level during creation, that may be altered later but it's a big weakness for XP. Linux has some superiority there, and it's free, and the best part. Average users can still execute admin level tasks using the sudo command in a command line or entering the root password during installations / supervision in a GNOME / alternative windows environment so they still have maximum capability if they have that level of authority over a network / computer and it's very secure.
X, the graphical windows system GNOME and KDE rely on does run at root supervisor level, that is a weakness, dev's are currently looking at Wayland ( http://wayland.freedesktop.org/ ) as an alternative windows system for GNOME. Other dev's are looking at how to tweak X so it's not running at root level. That is the current level of development at the moment.
Web-browsers like Chrome and Firefox should be updated in Linux often, as well as Flash player's and any JAVA installations to reduce the threat from scripting and cookie scammers / phishers.
Linux virus scanners like AVG Free, AVAST and ClamAV / KlamAV can also be installed onto a GNOME or KDE desktop and frequent full scan's are recommended. Linux is still a powerful and more secure alternative to Windows and I hope users of SL consider Linux as a serious option in the present and future.
I completely agree that XP should be ditched after April 8th and a Linux distribution considered as an alternative installation to Microsoft Windows. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint are good Linux choices I feel at this time, as well as the funky new SteamOS and there are many other Linux distro's just as good, of course. Free office application software & Video's can be watched in VLC, a free download and it can play MP3's too. :)
Plus, the 'closing the sale' part, Second Life client's are natively installable on Linux windows environment's such as GNOME.
Regards, Linux Nerd and Proud.
