Life in the Dual-Boot Environment . . . at the Foothills of the Headlands
Posted by Andrew | Filed under Computing
Previously I mentioned the incompatibility between Windoze and anything remotely resembling "Internet security". 😀 It is a fact that as the various threats on the Net have become more apparent, this particular sector of my HDD has had more and more third-party software added, at some cost. :furious: I now have Ad-Aware, Xoftspy, PeerGuardian2, Trend Micro Internet Security, Spybot Search and Destroy, Spywareblaster (which seems to have suddenly become defunct due to an irreparably "corrupted database") and finally, xp-AntiSpy, a piece of freeware which simply allows the user to switch off certain unhelpful functions, like that fact that MSN Messenger always starts up with the system irrespective of whether you want it to or not – an instant security risk, in fact. 😮
This is in total contrast with the situation regarding the (now) major partition on this HDD, in which I am running LinuxMandrake 10.1. Unlike previous incarnations of Mandrake (now Mandriva after a merger with Conectiva of Brazil), which I could not get to run properly in version 7.0 back in 1999 on any of my systems in England and Wales, it ran first time and crashes were few, but I did have problems, largely I suspect because my (Windoze-inspired) answer to the fatal crashes was to rebuild from scratch, and this led to several kernels being resident when a little judicious editing of a particular file would have cured the problem. :rolleyes:
I had downloaded the ISO patterns using Shareaza and cut them to CD before installing them into a new ext3fs and swap partitions alongside XP, using PartitionExpert. Later, I did the same with 10.1 and the wiping of the partition plus a more careful approach to exactly which other software should be installed has paid dividends in the form of a stability and security which M$ cannot even hope to approach, at least not without a complete change of architecture. :happy: So in fact, there is very little that can be done under Windoze which cannot also be performed under Mandrake – I even use the same Internet browsers and office software under both, and I have paid for NOTHING which now occupies the Linux partition (except for legitimate music downloads).
That's right, NOTHING. But why? Although Mandrake would prefer "customers" to pay for things, and indeed I shall do this in the end because I am so satisfied with their products, under the terms of the GNU Public Licence, Open Source software means sharing not hoarding – so a "public version" with less on offer is commonly put out by Linux software houses for people to simply download and use; upgraded (i.e. more security-tight) programs pop up regularly and can simply be downloaded and installed almost as easily as with, er, You-know-what. :cheers:
"Distibutions" ("distros") of Linux are many and I could not possibly go into a great amount of detail here and now, but suffice it to say that for ease of installation, ease of use, economy and security, many kick ten bales of crap out of Windoze. Let's do a quick comparison of how they stack up:
1: The various shades of L. are much more secure not because features are designed in, but because they are designed out. This means that for the most part, it is not necessary to spend cash on third-party protection; attacks upon L. systems are mainly of the "Denial of Service" (DoS) type and only temporary. I did however install the free version of BitDefender and I update this regularly; it scans all of the partitions including the W*****s and guess what? It has NEVER shown any spyware, malware or viruses in the L. partition, but it still finds Trojans and the like "elsewhere" (I wonder where . . ?) when even Trend and Xoftspy do not.
Windoze has problems for one very simple reason: it is a bloated system and to increase the performance speed, programs are tightly-integrated, meaning that it is much easier for viruses and the like to propagate. Add chat clients and P2P networking and you have a nightmare of viruses and everything else.
2: For similar reasons, although bits of Mandrake may be slow in performance because they are written in Java for cross-platform use, Windoze can also be slowed down by many things – apart from actual viruses, the amount of scanning software required for malware, spyware, Trojans and the thousands of viruses which are specific to 32-bit Windoze slow it down a huge amount, and may even prevent user access while they are running. But if one loses a few seconds when starting an application under Linux, this is a small price to pay for the security of the whole system. Beggars can't be choosers! :ninja:
3: M$ has become increasingly involved in Digital Rights Management (DRM) and therefore continues to annoy and frustrate ordinary users who suddenly find that a legitimate download of music (using M$ OS and perhaps even their own apps) cannot even be transferred from the HDD to their iPod or whatever, because the DRM software kicks in and prevents it!
This is a problem which never arises under Linux, where a whole range of excellent media players can be used – Totem, Kaffeine, AmaroK, even the Linux version of RealPlayer can all be installed and work perfectly. And no DRM involvement. 😆
4: M$ also has its creaky Internet Explorer, which is more full of security holes than a colander for the purpose of surfing the Internet. Under both OSes, I use Opera 8.01 which is much more secure; the other alternatives are Netscape 8.0 under Windoze and Firefox under Linux, but alas, it transpires that Netscape have now effectively created a "parasite" browser along the lines of the old SlimBrowser, which could not be used in the absence of an earlier incarnation of IE, and I therefore use this only to access my mail account with Netscape. RealPlayer Gold under Windoze is similarly hobbled. When will these people realize that proper cross-platform apps are better than putting all your eggs in one basket?
5: Where XP does have something of an advantage right now is in the use of "bandwidth shaping" software to prevent the frequent and temporary "blockages" caused by packet floods overloading the firewall, something which frequently happens under L., but I have found, since installing the Guarddog firewall and using this instead of Shorewall, that eventually the system settles down quite satisfactorily; adding as much "latency" as possible to the other apps such as RealPlayer also keeps things smoother.
In the opinion of many such as myself, the two OSes side by side complement each other rather than antagonise each other, as one usually finds that there is something which one does better than the other, or even that one does things that the other cannot, e.g. there is now a range of Real.com .ram-compatible streaming audio players, but Media player is licenced technology from M$ and cannot be cloned. Hence, some streams, such as that from Classic FM in the UK, which uses Media Player, cannot be played under L.
(In this context, with office suites such as OpenOffice and EasyOffice, which can be installed under a range of OSes and therefore share files between platforms, a perfect mobile answer becomes available as Internet mail accounts now have large capacities, and attachment sizes of up to 20mb are not unheard of; I use Yahoo to store and transfer files and this is perfect – far easier than scrabbling around with floppy disks and CD-ROMS, and completely free. :star: )
6: The final benefit of L. over M$ is that the former can read NTFS and FAT filesystems and copy from them into its own FS, something which is clearly beyond the limited psychology of the M$ veal-pen minions. M$ tries all the time to take over the formats and technology of others for its own benefit (rumour has it that it plans to do this with RSS under Longhorn), but despite the fact that the GNU Public Licence presumably does not prevent it from using such things, it cannot adapt it to the point of being patentable and, therefore, solely belonging to Microsoft. Well, my heart just bleeds . . . :jester:
We cannot be surprised that even Operating Systems eventually become democratised; when there are no doubt millions of programmers out there of many nationalities and varying degrees of ability who are able not just to create new programs but new kernels too (hear that, Linus?), there have to arise limits to the growth of any one particular alternative. M$ has been trading for too long on a combination of product facility and desirability and user incompetence to dominate the market with buggy, overpriced, overdue and insecure OSes; now the users are biting back.
Long live the Revolution! :star:
PS – If you're really interested . . . you can see me and read about where I live and what I get up to at:
http://free.hostdepartment.com/f/fukudasan/index.html?1103377764328
Cheers! :beer:
