Windows Is Free

Tokyo Linux Users Group ^ | 15 August 2007 | Dave Gutteridge

[Tijeras_Slim]

I didn’t understand a thing you wrote... can we talk about guns and cheap wimmen instead? :)

[hiredhand]

That would be fine with me! I like guns and women a lot better than computers and operating systems anyway. :-)

[Squantos]

LOL........Good answer !

Part I didn’t understand must have been about New Mexicans !....:o)

As you state....if one wants simplicity, speed for surfing and basic documents in open office etc then Linux is the way to go.

Especially if one has an older desktop or laptop laying around. I snagged a new HP pavilion dv6436nr Entertainment notebook that has 2GB of memory, 160GB HD, Nvidia geforce go 6150 graphics card etc running Pista OS (sic) . It’s OK but when I loaded Ubuntu on my older compaq presario laptop with 50GB HD and 512mb of memory it out performs that new notebook in speed for surfing the net..........

My daily surfing notebook I use on the net is the old presario. It is faster, safer and no virus seems to bother it.......yet.

[RockinRight]

Many business applications are unavailable for Linux. Also, few games are available. I think that combination is why it hasn’t caught on. I had Ubuntu on an old machine and liked it, but it wasn’t all that useful, not to mention installing programs was difficult for me, a relatively experienced user, and would be damn-near impossible for the average Joe.

[hiredhand]

Yes! Linux is WONDERFUL on older hardware! Because of this, we stay "about" two years behind the rest of the world with PCs here at the house, and we get good performance out of them!

MS has consistently driven the home PC market to keep latest/gratest hardware in order to run their bloated OS and applications. But that's good for us because we get the "old" hardware that can't run MS OSes anymore!

Grub is on!....brb. :-)

[Golden Eagle]

Yeah well I’m a linux skeptic, Linus Torvalds came from a family of well known communists in east europe and a green party whacko named Richard Stallman owns more rights to the code than anyone. You can run US original Unix like Sun Solaris if you don’t like Windows or Macs, and even get it for free if that’s your need. Sorry if I’m intruding on you but many don’t know about the radical “free software” leftists like Stallman until someone lets them know. Check out some of his videos on youtube if you’ve gotten that running yet.

[Squantos]

Thanks for sharing that with me.....didn’t know the history. Just that it works, was free , let me utilize old hardware that would have been tossed due it’s lack of ability to keep up with new MAC or Windows OS’s and didn’t establish or sustain a monopoly on minimum number of common users like myself.

Never feel like yer intruding at FR.....You have good info share it !

Stay safe !

[Golden Eagle]

You’re welcome, and I’ll admit it’s hard to beat the price of free but when you consider every communist government in the world is standardizing on it then you start to see there is a price being paid. The next step is when we start seeing legislatures or government officials here in the US trying to pass similar rules here in the US requiring our various government offices use it, which have so far thankfully all been shot down, but there is a strong leftist movement behind this stuff few know about. If you’d like some links let me know.

[Squantos]

Sure when ya have time....no rush as I can’t check em till later as I am headed for some sleep now.......

Thanks again for the education !

Stay safe !

[hiredhand]

I used to have an "interesting" job with the DoD. One day, monkeying around with a Windows NT server, we discovered an escrow crypto key buried in the guts of the operating system. The organization whos name was associated with the key wasn't "supposed" to be doing operations inside borders of CONUS, so we wondered if it was real or not. I worked for a DRU (direct reporting unit) to Air Staff and we reported this through channels. Lo and behold, the very next release didn't include the escrow key. The next service pack removed it from our system. We received no feedback from above, which isn't uncommon.

Even today, I've analized Windows systems which haven't had a single software package added to them and they're trying to contact various places out there on the net on various port numbers. Why? Good question. Not all of the communications were to Microsoft.

My view is this. I've been in the business of securing communications and data for a long time. Windows simply isn't a viable platform to perform these functions. Microsoft tells me I can "trust them", but they won't prove that they can be trusted. The guys you mention might not be the greatest folks on this planet, but thier operating systems have been scrutinized by far too many others for much to get past. The same can't be said about MS. In addition, MS has a deplorable business reputation. I work for state gov't now, but when I was a consultant, it was generally thought to simply be "bad luck" to enter partnership with MS at any level. I've got plenty of horror stories, but they're not worth repeating here. Most can be found on Google.

I wasn't going to mention this here, but my favorite is really FreeBSD, and then OpenBSD for firewalls.

Stallman is known to be a nutcase. :-) ...as is Theo Deradt, although he seems to be a malicious nutcase.

Oh..."Slow-laris"? Nah...not going back there! :-)

[Golden Eagle]

No problem I don’t have much time either, here’s a primer though:

http://www.salon.com/tech/log/1999/09/10/cybercommunism/index.html

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1617712,00.asp

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/05/technology/05systems.html?ex=1246766400&en=269f1a83d00e9e51&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

http://www.informationweek.com/software/opensource/42700029

http://ianmurdock.com/?p=54

http://www.linux.com/articles/31250

[Golden Eagle]

I work for DoD now doing the same type of work, but I’ve not seen any outgoing traffic from standard MS installs and one of the very first things we install on our systems are 3rd party software firewalls that track all outgoing packets. The DoD is now making windows systems their “standard” operating systems as a matter of fact, which has been going very well. But there are plenty of other choices out there, FreeBSD as you said (I won’t use “the Rat’s” OpenBSD version after his comments about our military which caused his DoD funding to get jerked). If you think Solaris is slow you should really check out the new “Indiana” version of OpenSolaris, fastest version of Unix for Intel I’ve ever used, even in a VM.

[hiredhand]

Yeah...the "Rat" could have used just a little discretion. I can't integrate his OS into a production environment with them expecting the end user to essentially rebuild the OS from sources. They'll never end up getting any sizeable usage audience. Besides, FreeBSD does everything OpenBSD does.

I understand what you're saying about third party firewalls, but those firewalls MUST use the APIs that MS provides them. I've used those APIs before and it's like programming through a "keyhole". You're left with the definite impression that there's more available then what they're giving you, or worse...what you might be "giving" somebody else. I don't trust them, and they give me no good reason to trust them.

I might try OpenSolaris, but we've been running Debian Linux on all of our custom application servers, and RedHat Enterprise 4 on those that aren't custom. The Sparc 64 port of Debian loads up on my older Netra T1-105s, E250s and E220s in the lab, but "looks" like the same Debian Linux that runs on the Intel based servers.

But thanks for letting me know about OpenSolaris! :-)

[Golden Eagle]

We have multiple other methods in place for tracking network traffic and nothing unexpected is going out that I’ve ever seen, and I can’t imagine we would be directed from the highest levels to standardize on MS products like we have been either if they were secretly transmitting information from behind our perimeter to outside parties. With all respect you’ll have to come up with some other evidence before I’ll believe it’s happening, because my experience is to the contrary. Windows systems can be secured just as good as any other O/S with the right people managing them, the users well trained and operating without admin privileges, etc, just as any other operating system is insecure without proper setup/management and being controlled by untrained users.

I’ve been here since everything was VMS and many flavors of Unix, but we’ve migrated almost everything to Windows and things have never run better. The programmers (who now like to be called “developers” instead LOL) really seem to like the Microsoft programming tools better too, we used to do lots of Java based programming and run the webservers on Sun and databases on Oracle, but it’s all Microsoft now and there’s not a person here who’d like to change back. Competition for Microsoft is good, but I’d just prefer it be American owned companies and not based on free clones from Europe or US socialists, which is how I view Linux.

[antiRepublicrat]

Is there any way I can run programs like Adobe InDesign in one of the Linux versions?

Last I heard there are no plans to port InDesign to Linux. Other than that, the best you can do for page layout is Scribus.

[antiRepublicrat]

Thanks for sharing that with me

Don't be taken in by his lies and libel. He is, by far, the most proven liar on these tech discussions, and has been banned multiple times for his abuse.

Torvalds' (the creator of Linux) father was communist, but what GE won't tell you is that this fact caused a lot of friction between them. GE also won't tell you that Torvalds' parents divorced when he was young, and he was not raised by his father.Of course, this unfair "sins of the father" that GE is trying to pull is complete BS. Interviews show that Torvalds is apolitical. All he wants is good software and considers open source to be a development model, not a philosophy.

What GE also won't tell you is that the tools owned by the radical socialist Stallman (or using his license) that appear in Linux also widely appear in other operating systems, such as Mac OS X. Or that he goes by number of available titles in Stallman's repository (not a nod to importance), including obscure libraries that are interesting to maybe a dozen people in the world and are optional installs in Linux.

He also won't tell you that Stallman and Torvalds often have very heated public disagreements because Torvalds doesn't mix politics and ideology with software, like Stallmand and our own Golden Eagle do.

Go ahead and try OpenSolaris though. But you're in for some heartache if you thought drivers for Linux were a problem.

[antiRepublicrat]

The DoD is now making windows systems their “standard” operating systems as a matter of fact, which has been going very well.

One acronym: NMCI

[antiRepublicrat]

The programmers (who now like to be called “developers” instead LOL) really seem to like the Microsoft programming tools better too

There I have to agree. C# is a pleasure to work with, and VS 2005 is pretty good. Some things in the .NET framework still annoy me, but the number of annoyances is much less that what I had in Java or other platforms.

[N3WBI3]

Its always good to know all sides of the story and while GE will point out that governments like China and Vietnam use Linux he gives a pass to their use of windows because we get paid.

He also ignores many American business who benefit by using / selling Linux..

Cheers

[N3WBI3]

Hey hire, I got a sun blade work station and I’m going to replace the Solaris10 on it with Linux, any suggestion as to a good sparc based distro would be nice ;)