Matt Giwer replied:

Rich wrote:

[...]

The need for updates is going to be on-going for some time yet. At least in Linux there is no or little pressure to add extra features in an update that then adds extra bugs over the ones supposedly being fixed...

That's always been a problem with patches and updates, they tend to
break other things and other patches and updates. It's not a pretty picture.

    With the incompetant MS design patches and updates can and do break other parts of the OS. In linux they do not.

My my, you need to do some research.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc/2002/debian-glibc-200210/msg00216.html

Bug#155939: marked as done (libc6: libc6 broke apache and all its modules)

---

Linux patches indeed to break things, and often fail to work.

The number of linux patches is astounding to see. There are thousands if
not hundreds of thousands of patches out there, just for linux.

They can only affect the  application not the OS or its operation.

You need to look into the kernel patches, they affect only the OS, which
of course, affects all the applications and users.

The OS and applications are completely separate in linux while in MS they

> are deliberately intermingled.

Bullshit, the dll's in windows derive from shared libraries in unix.
In unix library compatibility issues are as ubiquitous as dll problems,
and for exactly the same reason. I don't know how many times I've trussed
an ailing program, notices the wrong library path being used, and fixed
it via rearranging the LIBRARY_PATH variable of the shell. But guess what,
this can break other programs. It's somewhat of a black art.

And no central planning or control, which makes what gets done
somewhat hit or miss.

Possibly so, but there is also a lot of cohesion for getting the 'important' bits together. There are some major worldwide voluntary efforts that surpass the efforts of Redmond. Then there is the Linux kernel itself!

The Chinese choice. Not sure if this is a good thing or not.

    It is certainly an insane (or your favorite adjective) to mix applications with the OS. Just on best design practice the choice is linux.

I'm talking about linux, not an application. Not that you can run linux
applications on windows, solaris, or any other OS.

    http://www.ale.org/archive/ale/ale-1999-11/msg00310.html

    Linux, the official OS of Red China
    http://www.ga-source.com/linux/news/bits/10+10+1999/16:54:2.shtml


    The Chinese government is so enthusiastic about the community ethos
    behind the open source community that it is making Linux the official
    operating system of the Peoples Republic of China, thanks to a deal
    struck with US server side computing firm GraphOn.

    The deal will allow a variety of server side applications to be run
    on cost efficient Linux boxes in Chinese universities, military
    installations and even within the government.

    According to GraphOn there is a strong identification between communist
    China and the open-source free operating system that is taking the
    western world by storm. "Enthusiasm for Linux is coming from the very
    highest level of the Government in China," says Robin Ford executive
    vice president of GraphOn. "There are cultural reasons why they are so
    interested in Linux in China, because it is open source."

    GraphOn concedes however that the Chinese government is probably
    enthused by its server technology because it provides a simple way of
    keeping an eye on users' computer activity. "It is all about control
    but it's not an ugly or a bad control, it's not a big brother sort of
    thing," says Ford. "It's about cost control and they've looked at the
    problems that other markets have had with desktop based application and
    want to avoid them." Reported By: James Hills  Posted At: 4:54 pm
    CST - Wednesday, November 10, 1999

You can have the least secure version in the form of 'Lindows', through a spectrum to some very secure distributions. The Mandrake 9.1 distribution I'm using now has various 'security levels' depending on your paranoia. You have a choice.

If you know your way round unix you can make anything secure (short of
bugs and undiscovered security holes). You can also make windows pretty
secure, just by a router with a NAT firewall and/or install one of the
many PC based firewalls ( I don't care to argue whether it's a firewall
or not). With reasonable and cheap security measures ( Zonealarm is free)
you can eliminate or reduce most external security threats. But same
as with Linux, you need experience and some platform specific knowledge.

    Having used both I can say with linux it is just a matter of learning how things are done and what software does what. That may be a daunting task to some because it requires reading the docs and occasionally the source code. With Windows I got this leaflet on how to push keys and click a mouse and that was about it. Being the curious type I developed several methods of dealing with the enforced ignorance imposed upon my by MS. So tell me, how does one learn their way around Windows with that uninformative leaflet?

Your inability to find documentation is astounding. I'm amazed that you
found any documentation with linux at all, as they don't even give you
that piece of paper that had you so confused.

How is it that you can look up information on linux but never even tried
with windows? Is this supposed to show how biased you are? It's certainly
not an advert for your intelligence.

There is much information on the net WRT Microsoft, and there are many
books available on the subject. You may be able to get them from the
library. The A+ books seem to work for me.

But I've seen many security problems on unix systems over the years,
usually of the buffer overflow variety that allows a root shell to
be obtained. Unix is no more secure than it's system admin. Now for
home systems this is rarely a big problem. But how many companies have
had credit card numbers stolen by a hacker, from unix based systems?
How many govt agencies have had sensitive information stolen, from
unix systems, by hackers? Check out "The Cuckoo's Egg".

Its all a case of 'significance'. The examples quoted above are often due to '3rd parties' being 'entrusted' with data for it to be then intercepted or just lost.

No, not at all, the cases I'm talking about were a result of hacker
breakin to the sites. Surely you heard about the govt sites that were
turned into porn sites at least. And this compromises not only data
sent via the internet, but info you phone in or mail in as they get
stored in the same computers.

    Which is why DOD and the NSA have developed high security patches for linux and then installed it in place of those compromised MS machines.

Why would they need patches since you claim linux is so secure?

Look, your claims about linux security are way out of line. Along
with your claims about linux patches. There are more patches for
linux than the source code for windows, there are patches for everything.
The kernel patches are the most troubling. Were linux as solid as
you say they would be few and far between instead of being as ubiquitous
as linux itself.

Windows is neither good or bad, Linux is neither good or bad (and it's
nowhere near as perfect as you claim).

Installing linux on a PC has always been a difficult procedure, although
it's getting better. But the problem for almost everything has been lack
of drivers (and this is still true for much hardware you might buy). Many
cheap computers come with winmodems, which use a windows service to
replace hardware on the modem (and reduce the cost to $10-$20). Just try
and install one on a linux box. Your hardware choices are still more
limited (although much better than just 5 years back), and manufacturer
support for hardware is today just so-so, rather than virtually nonexistent.

You still need to be careful what hardware you use, just for starters.

Rich