Is Microsoft Trying To Make Linux Illegal?

Originally posted by buddha
You can try Ubuntu Linux 10.10 free.
and it installs as good as windows.
and you can run it from a CD to see if you like it.
Linuxs is catching up with windows very fast.
and when they pass it.
oh boy will that hurt microsoft.

Wrong, Linux is years ahead of Microsoft. Ubuntu 11.04 is the latest release, and soon to be 11.10

Originally posted by buddha
You can try Ubuntu Linux 10.10 free.
and it installs as good as windows.
and you can run it from a CD to see if you like it.
Linuxs is catching up with windows very fast.
and when they pass it.
oh boy will that hurt microsoft.

Haha you are suffering from the Year of the Desktop Linux syndrome. Linux isn't standardized, there is multiple installers, package managers, GUIs, and network managers. It will be impossible for it to gain any amount of significant market share on the desktop.

Macs have a better chance since it's standardized like Windows. If you know how to deal with a problem on one of them you know how to deal with the same problem on all of them. Not so with Linux.

Macs have a better chance since it's standardized like Windows. If you know how to deal with a problem on one of them you know how to deal with the same problem on all of them. Not so with Linux.

No so, Macs cost too much for the average buyer. And Linux does not have a lot of problems like windows does, in fact, even with a cutting edge distro like Fedora, like I myself run, problems are easily solved just by consulting the forum, of using my own head. Linux is faster that Windows, or Macs, never gets a virus, is really hard to hack, and is stable as can be. I work on computers for a partial living, and have seen a few Macs. Most customers who bring me a Mac want to know if I can install Linux on it, which I can. Novell software is no owned by Microsoft anyway.
fedoraproject.org...

Running Linux on Your Mac
tidbits.com...

I think what scare most people about Linux is the Command Line. Most easy to learn, people, took my wife, not a computer junkie like me, but a normal user, two weeks to learn all about Linux.

Originally posted by autowrench

Macs have a better chance since it's standardized like Windows. If you know how to deal with a problem on one of them you know how to deal with the same problem on all of them. Not so with Linux.

No so, Macs cost too much for the average buyer. And Linux does not have a lot of problems like windows does, in fact, even with a cutting edge distro like Fedora, like I myself run, problems are easily solved just by consulting the forum, of using my own head. Linux is faster that Windows, or Macs, never gets a virus, is really hard to hack, and is stable as can be. I work on computers for a partial living, and have seen a few Macs. Most customers who bring me a Mac want to know if I can install Linux on it, which I can. Novell software is no owned by Microsoft anyway.
fedoraproject.org...

Running Linux on Your Mac
tidbits.com...

I think what scare most people about Linux is the Command Line. Most easy to learn, people, took my wife, not a computer junkie like me, but a normal user, two weeks to learn all about Linux.

Mac Minis are more affordable, though under powered. $600 for a Mini. So they aren't out of everyone's price range.

Where is your proof that Linux is harder to hack? Studies have been done that says it's easier to hack than Windows www.thenetworkadministrator.com... and other article that Macs are easier to hack than Windows news.softpedia.com...

Linux only has 2.07% of the market share it's secure by obscurity. Any OS that gets a large market share will get hacked and trojaned. We see trojans targeting Macs now because it is starting to get a larger market share. It's foolish to think any OS is 100% secure.

How is Linux more stable? There is bug regressions all the time. Even the new Linux 3.X kernel has a regression in it where it sucks up laptop battery life faster than Windows. Not to mention things can break when upgrading to a newer distro.

Fedora isn't a good choice for beginner. It's harder to install drivers because you have to install RPM Fusion, the font is terrible in it, you have to know how to install restricted codeces for media. Linux in general isn't as easy as Windows or Mac. You have to be competent on using a computer if you want to run Linux. Most people just want to be able to turn the computer on and use it. Not know how to install non-free repos, etc.

Microsoft doesn't own Novell, it's about virtualization.

"Agreement with Microsoft

On November 2, 2006, Novell and Microsoft announced a joint patent agreement to cover their respective products. They also promised to work more closely, to improve compatibility of software, setting up a joint research facility. Executives of both companies hope such cooperation will lead to better compatibility between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org and better virtualization techniques.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said of the deal, “This set of agreements will really help bridge the divide between open-source and proprietary source software.”

The deal involves upfront payment of $348 million from Microsoft to Novell for patent cooperation and SLES subscription. Additionally, Microsoft will spend around $46 million yearly, over the next 5 years, for marketing and selling a combined SLES/Windows Server offering and related virtualization solutions, while Novell will pay at least $40 million yearly to Microsoft, in the same period. en.wikipedia.org...

Novell got acquired by Attachmate en.wikipedia.org... NOT Microsoft. You have no idea what you are talking about.

Originally posted by IlluminatusOculus33
Where is your proof that Linux is harder to hack? Studies have been done that says it's easier to hack than Windows www.thenetworkadministrator.com... and other article that Macs are easier to hack than Windows news.softpedia.com...

Your first article, besides being from 2002, with the possibility of being outdated, is about the possibility of hacking through changes in the source code, or at least it was how I understood it.

There is a webkit security exploit that was found in Ubuntu that can allow cross scripting attacks Link

A large number of security issues were discovered in the WebKit browser and JavaScript engines. If a user were tricked into viewing a malicious website, a remote attacker could exploit a variety of issues related to web browser security, including cross-site scripting attacks, denial of service attacks, and arbitrary code execution.

Originally posted by IlluminatusOculus33 Where is your proof that Linux is harder to hack? Studies have been done that says it's easier to hack than Windows

Here is a real good place to test how vulnerable your computer really is.
pcflank.com...
Do a "Stealth" test. This will show you is your PC is visible on the internet, and remember, if you are not visible, you cannot be hacked.
As I said, I run Fedora with an I-Tables Firewall, and use Autoproxy with Tor. Here my own results:
The results of Stealth Test
We have sent following packets to TCP:1 port of your machine:
TCP ping packet
TCP NULL packet
TCP FIN packet
TCP XMAS packet
UDP packet

Here is the description of possible results on each sent packet:
"Stealthed" - Means that your system (firewall) has successfuly passed the test by not responding to the packet we have sent to it.
"Non-stealthed" - Means that your system (firewall) responded to the packet we have sent to it. What is more important, is that it also means that your computer is visible to others on the Internet that can be potentially dangerous.

Packet' type Status
TCP "ping" stealthed
TCP NULL stealthed
TCP FIN stealthed
TCP XMAS stealthed
UDP stealthed
Recommendation:
Your computer is invisible to the others on the Internet!
Run this on a Windows machine, you will be shocked.

When I installed my Fedora 64 bit, to get those pesky codecs, media players, Adobe flash, Sun Java, I ran EasyLife.
Of course, it is a matter of preference, you can also use AutoPlus.
Both work great, all automated installs.
Fedora 15 boots on my PC, even with a fully encrypted drive, in less than 20 seconds after I input the encryption code. I will admit, it slows down a bit after being on all day, but a fast reboot take care of that. When I ran Windows, I had a hard German made Firewall, and got hacked badly. the hacker installed a trojan, and emailed itself to all my contacts, and even got into a university computer system my daughter was hooked into. Since i have been running Linux, I have never been hacked, have never had any problem I myself could not fix.
By the way, pcflank.com... cannot even see my real IP address!

reply to post by autowrench


Any good Firewall on Windows, Mac, or Linux will pass that test.

Comodo Firewall

Online Armor

Those are the two most top rated third party firewall programs on Windows.

Nice try though.

Originally posted by autowrench
Here is a real good place to test how vulnerable your computer really is.
pcflank.com...

That's the one I use.

When I ran Windows, I had a hard German made Firewall, and got hacked badly. the hacker installed a trojan, and emailed itself to all my contacts, and even got into a university computer system my daughter was hooked into.

What version of Windows were you using when that happened? Windows 7's firewall, if I am not mistaken (I don't have any way of testing it now) gives full stealth result.

You are basically spreading FUD and disinfo about Microsoft trying to make Linux 'illegal' guess you haven't read that Microsoft is one of the top contributors to the Linux kernel.

In the case of the Linux kernel, that would be corporations with ties to Linux, and it may surprise you to hear that Microsoft is now one of the top contributors to the kernel.


but Microsoft has begun to embrace open source in some ways, and now ZDNet takes note of a Linux Weekly News story that says that Microsoft is the fifth largest contributor to the Linux kernel

ostatic.com...

You come off as Linux fanboy spouting the same 'Linux is better because x, y, z' when it's all BS. If Linux ever manages to get any significant market share on the desktop it will be targeted by hackers and malware writers. No system is %100 secure, once you stick someone in front of the computer you have a major security flaw right there, whether they be a Windows, Mac, or Linux user.

Linux can't play commercial games (with the exception of some id games.) because it has such a low user base 2.07% you will probably say well they can use WINE! THEN USE WINDOWS then at least you'll have better comparability. WINE is hit or miss with pc games.

Professional software isn't written for it. No 3D Studio Max, Adobe Photoshop, etc which is used in industries such as films and magazines. GIMP and Blender 3D have terrible UIs compared to commercial software and are more difficult to use.

You don't have to use Linux to use open source software as it is also available on Windows and Mac. So if you're desperate for free software you can get it on pretty much any OS out there.

Here is an article I came across

Now, in case you didn’t quite manage to put 2 + 2 together yourself, let me point out the obvious: Unix was originally developed in 1969, with the original networking technology that eventually led to the internet developed not much later.

Okay, so it took them about 19 years to come up with the concept of a firewall/packet filter, which is now one of the most basic measures of network security… In fact, the firewall actually BREAKS many rules of the official Internet Protocol in order to improve security. In other words, the Internet Protocol has some security problems *by design*.

That’s not all, however… When I started using unix systems in the mid-90s at university, they were pretty much still wide open. Lots of daemons running by default, wide open to the world, including nasty ones like fingerd, talkd and telnetd (not just linux, but also commercial variations like HP-UX). A standard linux distribution or FreeBSD would also install with pretty much all common daemons running by default. Wide open. Even the rpc daemon was running… all security holes waiting to happen. In fact, Windows systems were arguably more secure back in those days, because networking didn’t come standard, let alone network daemons/services.

I guess today’s linux advocates aren’t quite familiar with this history of linux, or unix in general. Doesn’t matter, their target audience likely won’t know anything about it either, and just accept their uninformed babble. It just makes them look like idiots to people who DO know how things really evolved. It’s bad enough that they don’t have a clue about Windows, their favourite target… but when they don’t even know about linux or unix itself, it gets pathetic.

source

reply to post by ArMaP

What version of Windows were you using when that happened? Windows 7's firewall, if I am not mistaken (I don't have any way of testing it now) gives full stealth result.

Windows 2000 Professional. That was over 10 years ago. I cannot remember the name of the Firewall I was using, it was all in German, I do not speak German, and I got it from a Warez site. I like the I-Tables Chains Firewall lots better than anything I had with Windows. I tried a few if the free firewalls, and a few of the shareware firewalls, even bought a license for Zone Alarm, but it ran out last year, for some reason. They wanted another $39.95 for a new license! My wife has a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a Realtec wireless modem, Realtec is owned my M$ and I cannot get a driver for Linux for it to work right. So, she is rather forced to run Windows. I am the computer nerd in the family, and I cannot stand Windows 7, for one thing it has four open ports, including a game port that cannot be closed. Another thing is it refuses to recognize Power Settings, and the screensaver would not show a slide-show of her photos. So, I installed Vista Home Edition, it runs great, and all those things work fine. She runs Zone Alarm Security Suite, I got mad at them and made their shareware into my-ware. To hell with them.

Originally posted by autowrench
Windows 2000 Professional. That was over 10 years ago.

That was on the previous millennium.

My wife has a Toshiba Satellite laptop with a Realtec wireless modem, Realtec is owned my M$ and I cannot get a driver for Linux for it to work right.

Sometimes is also difficult to find Realtek drivers for Windows. Is Realtek really owned by Microsoft? Could you point to a source for that? Thanks in advance.

So, she is rather forced to run Windows. I am the computer nerd in the family, and I cannot stand Windows 7, for one thing it has four open ports, including a game port that cannot be closed.

The last time I looked, Windows 7's firewall didn't had any open ports.

Another thing is it refuses to recognize Power Settings, and the screensaver would not show a slide-show of her photos.

Windows 7 screensaver has a slide-show, and you can chose the folder it uses as source for the photos. On the company where I work we have 3 or 4 laptops with Windows 7, and none has problems with the power settings, one of the laptops even got a better battery life with Windows 7 than with Windows Vista.

I don't remember it well, but I think you can configure Vista's firewall to make it at least as good as any other, you don't need a third party firewall if you know how to configure one.

Originally posted by autowrench

Windows 2000 Professional. That was over 10 years ago. I cannot remember the name of the Firewall I was using, it was all in German, I do not speak German, and I got it from a Warez site.

I am the computer nerd in the family, and I cannot stand Windows 7, for one thing it has four open ports, including a game port that cannot be closed.

So, I installed Vista Home Edition, it runs great, and all those things work fine. She runs Zone Alarm Security Suite, I got mad at them and made their shareware into my-ware. To hell with them.

BAM! That was your problem you was running a pirated Firewall bet it had trojans embedded in it. Dude you're slamming Microsoft when it was your fault for downloading warez. What did you think would happen?

Are you even using a legit copy of Win 7 or did you download it illegally too?

You're running a cracked version of Zone Alarm too now? There is free firewalls out there that will get the job done. Comodo is a great firewall.

That's pretty sad man. You rip on Windows for being unsecure when you downloaded pirated software off warez sites. You have nobody else to blame but yourself for your malware problem.

..

reply to post by IlluminatusOculus33

That's pretty sad man. You rip on Windows for being unsecure when you downloaded pirated software off warez sites. You have nobody else to blame but yourself for your malware problem.

First off, Warez is not what it used to me. Secondly, I belong to the
Free Software Foundation, and we advocate for free software, not paying for closed source junk that is so out of date when you install it. Look at the price Billionaire Microsoft wants for Windows 7 Ultimate? I'll just run Linux.

reply to post by autowrench


Free Software Foundation will that work on any distro?

Originally posted by autowrench
Secondly, I belong to the Free Software Foundation, and we advocate for free software, not paying for closed source junk that is so out of date when you install it.

Do you advocate for not paying but using, or not paying and not using?

Originally posted by autowrench
First off, Warez is not what it used to me. Secondly, I belong to the
Free Software Foundation, and we advocate for free software, not paying for closed source junk that is so out of date when you install it. Look at the price Billionaire Microsoft wants for Windows 7 Ultimate? I'll just run Linux.

He was pointing out that you did say you got a Windows firewall program of a warez site did you forget you typed this?

I cannot remember the name of the Firewall I was using, it was all in German, I do not speak German, and I got it from a Warez site.

She runs Zone Alarm Security Suite, I got mad at them and made their shareware into my-ware. To hell with them.

link to your post

You also implied you cracked Zone Alarm. You really can't say Windows is insecure when you downloaded a pirated firewall program. Common sense would tell you it probably had trojans/malware embedded in it.

If you cracked Zone Alarm that would have made it insecure too.

I like open source software but you do have to admit proprietary programs are better. They invest a lot of money in them to make them more user friendly. You just want to make a religion out of Linux and FOSS. They are just tools. One system isn't better than the other. Everybody has different needs for their system.

Also no one is forcing you or anyone else to buy Windows 7 Ultimate. Windows 7 Home Premium is affordable and is the one that is mostly used by people.

Any so called "Shareware" is quite easy to crack, all you need is the know how to do it. And it wasn't malware in the Firewll, what it was, I made some people mad at me in a forum a lot like this one. Two of them created a website using my name and posted copyrighted material on it, then turned me in. When the IPs were different, and I was off the hook, they send a Trojan Horse Virus to my computer. It gathered all of my email addresses and emailed itself to everyone on my list. We all got hit bad. My daughter at the time was attending Purdue University, and was hooked into their server. The Purdue servers went down for three days.

It was then that I saw the fallacy of running Windows. As I said, my wife has to run Windows, and she too has been hacked. they got into her Yahoo email, her Facebook account, and emailed links to porn sites to all of her friends. It is sad how easy it is to hack a Windows computer. I know, you guys think you are safe, but in reality, you are not as safe as you think. If someone really wants to get you, they will, and the Windows Firewall will not stop it, nor will Zone Alarm. You need I-Tables Chains for an attack like that.

What the Free Software Foundation is about is introducing people to Linux, and trying to kill off Corporate Giant M$ in the process. Linux is free, and is stable, and is secure. The reason more people do not run Linux is simply they are scared. There is not thing one to be scared of. The easy to use GUI install programs are easier to use that the one with Windows. The program on most all Linux operating systems will automatically create partitions for your install, but also have programs so you can create custom partitions, real handy if you have a problem one day. Fedora and Ubuntu (Alternative, not Live CD) has an LUKS Encryption algorithm that allows you to encrypt your hard drive automatically. You have to input a password at boot, of course. There are several choices of your Window Manager. There is KDE 4, which is somewhat like the Windows interface, and Gnome, which is different, it has the task bar on top, and activity bar on the bottom. There is LXDE, again with task bar at the bottom, LXDE and XFS are somewhat alike, very light, and very fast. I like KDE 4 myself, it is a memory hog, and is hard to configure, but I like eye candy on my computer. I like Personas for Firefox, and have many car photos for my screensaver.

Linux comes with many games, there some odd 150 games in the Repos, some simple, some open GL. You can install Open Office as an alternative to M$ Office. The new Firefox 6.0 absolutely flies, and is more secure than ever.
My computer retains no webpages, no cookies are kept, Temp files are gone when I shut down.

My computer has 10 partitions, all but one is encrypted, that is /boot. Grub is my boot loader, and it is password protected, as is my BIOS. My /home partition has a separate password, and a different encryption algorithm. My IP address shows as being in China, if it shows at all, and is masqueraded at every webpage I visit. I use a switching proxy server at all times.

The Internet is not a safe place, remember that. And be careful what you say, and to whom.

Originally posted by ArMaP

Originally posted by autowrench
Secondly, I belong to the Free Software Foundation, and we advocate for free software, not paying for closed source junk that is so out of date when you install it.

Do you advocate for not paying but using, or not paying and not using?

I will not pay for another Microsoft program.