Science Forums 2

[alexander]

ok, back, ready to finish hopefully:

The Linux-Windows 2005 TCO Comparison Survey, found that network administrators can restore a Windows server 30 percent faster than a Linux server. But DiDio said that in the "overwhelming majority of cases" this was not caused by the core Linux operating system, but by insufficient documentation.

and they call it a servey after that? what kind of a scientiffic research compares 2 things based on with different condition, its like comparing 2 types of steal for their corosiveness and placing one in fresh water and the other in salt... And what kind of an argument are they looking at, they are saying that windoze is better than Linux by stating the research results that compared the speed of recovery of the system where there was sufficient documentation for the win box, and not sufficient documentation on the linux one, and at the end state that it has nothing to do with the OS at all? I dont know, but thats just screwed up...

It tends to be easier to find security information on Windows than on Linux, she said, as this information can be found in the same place.

lol they are definately not referring to the microsoft website are they, because one, its impossible to find anything on the microsoft website, two their documentation is really nowhere near sufficient and three i swear my friends were looking up some information on the microsoft site about active directory, they found an answer that said that if you have a problem that they were experiencing you can do this, and it might work... Seriously, trying to find anything in help, is more than a hassle, and if you found a problem with something not working just as you'd like it to, there is no way you can fix it, cuz its a black box, linux on the other hand provides very easy to understand man pages, and all software manufacturers have project websites as well as there are linux security websites that will tell you how to secure your linux box, no matter the distro, and if you dont understand linux, you should not be running it on your server!

"There is a fractured community around Linux," said DiDio. "One of the problems you have with [security] attacks is that there are very few aggregate sites where all the known vulnerabilities are listed across different platforms and applications. Microsoft has a better infrastructure for that."

they must be on crack... http://secunia.com/ is way better than microsoft security section and a simple google search will reveal

Originally Posted by google search

Results 1 - 10 of about 56,000,000 for linux security. (0.77 seconds)

they should really get off whatever it is that they are smoking.

The survey asked respondents to evaluate both Linux and Windows against a number of criteria, on a scale of one to ten. Overall, Linux servers scored higher for security than Windows servers, according to the survey, with Linux scoring 8.3 out of 10 and Windows Server 2003 scoring 7.6. This is a significant improvement on last year's score, said DiDio.

that score would be higher for linux if they have serveyed people who actually know how to setup real linux boxes, not the point and click administrators, although they still know more about security than wondows point and click administrators.

But she said the assumption that Linux is more secure than Windows can lead to problems. "The biggest security threat facing the Linux environment is complacency — the community has focused too much attention on being more secure than Windows," said DiDio.

that is really a long oxymoron, just like secure windows, or protected telnet communication, now, how is the community focus on security a largest SECURITY threat to the OS? How is it the assumption again if a sentance ago they have produced hard core evidence that Linux is more secure?

"In calculating TCO, the protection of investment is often not sufficiently considered," said Meskes. "To use new technologies with Windows, you sometimes need to swap the complete system. That leads to the need to set up a server from scratch, migrate data, and individual applications may no longer work."

"For example, if you want to attach USB devices to a Windows NT server, as USB is not supported on a Windows NT server the whole operating system must be swapped. With Linux you only have to update the kernel, which would take an expert about 15 minutes."

To that, how stupid is it to have to reboot an os when you install a program, and only microsoft does it. My friend owns a G4 laptop with OSX running on it, the system does great and suspend to ram works really fine, so his box had a huge uptime, he decided to install some microsoft program on it (cant remember whether it was map point or something else), and upon the finish the box needed to be rebooted, thats where we knew that microsoft software was almost as bad as their OS...
Oh, and how does it take a professional 15 minutes to setup a USB device? so ok, first of all a good linux admin would make usb at least a module, from there its the time it takes to install usb hotplugging and that doesnt take 15 minutes. From there insert the device and mount it, voila you are up and operational in minutes, ok, so you dont have the support for usb in the kernel, you cd into /usr/src/linux and do make menuconfig, then go to device drivers and USB, module all the suppot, save and exit, execute make modules_install and do modules-update, from there hotplugging and mounting and you should be up in less than 10-12 minutes...

DiDio admitted that Windows desktops are less secure than Linux, but claimed that Windows offers better patching. "Certainly Windows desktops are more porous and more vulnerable," said DiDio. "We found that Windows desktops had an average rating of 6.9 compared with a rating of well over eight for Linux. But what happens if there is an attack and no patch available [for Linux]?"

Wait a second, wasnt she just assuming that just 4 sentences ago? and what kind of bull is the rest of that? windows patching is better than linux, there's more of windows patches that's true, but the patches themselves are better in Linux then they are in windows, they dont present new volnurabilities, also they are better and come out faster than windows are, on average you need a few hundred people with some problem to get microsoft to act, if a linux admin finds out that there is a volnurability in his system, he'd write a patch for it in a moment, send a copy to linux distro devs, and the patch will be released to the public (being read through a few times so its not a virus. There have been virus updates in windows before, and remember to reboot for your patch to take effect lol.
The rest of that hoplah is even more stupid, if any os is attacked and there is no patch available to stop the attack, and you dont know you are attacked, and your ids doesnt catch it, no matter what OS, you are screwed no matter what.

She hit back against this claim on Wednesday, slamming the "extremist fringe of Linux loonies" who she claimed were disrespectful and insulting to those they disagreed with.

They are disrespectful for a good reason, people who only know what they were paid to tell you can not be convinced back, people that sit there with their armes crossed saying that they are right even though everything they have said is proven backwards to them by their own evidence... sorry gotta go these were the main points that i had problems with, the rest can be easily thrown into that pile too, but i dont have the time. Maybe the linux loonies are right for calling her DiDiot

Excuse me for the language again, thank you.