Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

Well, I've had a few friends ask me about Linux over break, so how 'bout a post on that?

For those of you living in Microsoft's America, along with about 50-75% of Americans, there ARE other operating systems out there, believe it or not. yes, you have a choice. Other, even better, news. A lot of the time, these operating systems are much more secure, better maintained, and free. Yes, free. As in, downloading the torrent for them does not get a lawsuit!

Now, how can something better be cheaper at the same time? It goes back to the post I had about "communist" software. It is written by a bunch of people who want their own operating system, and want to have peace of mind about what is in it. All the parts of it are Open Source, so if you're paranoid, you can read the entire OS for security vulnerabilities. Or, if you don't like something, you can re-write it quite easily (easily for a programmer). Its all legal.

So these guys got together, wrote an OS, and it branched many times. So "Linux" is made up of hundreds of "distros", distributions that are different. You can use anything from Damn Small Linux, a bootable CD that's only 50 MB, to something bloated like Fedora Core 4, which arrives on 4 CDs, and is a 6 GB installation. It's all up to you, the user.

Notice a difference already? In Windows you install what Gates tells you. Ok, you've got the choice between Pro, and Home, and perhaps Windows 2000, though that's going to be killed real soon, I predict summer of 2006. Here, you have complete control over what is installed, you know it's written well, and if you don't like it, you can change it yourself, change distros, or just change the specific package, they're just about all available seperatly.

Sound nice? It gets better. The security on Open Source versus Closed Source software is, most of the time, the difference between Action and Reaction. In order for Closed Source software to find a vulnerability, it just about has to exist in the wild. So Microsoft finds out about the bug once it is exploited and a anti-virus company tells them about it. Then they take a while to fix it, to test it thoroughly. I've seen reports this takes as long as 6 months, and normally as short as two months. So an exploit can exist for up to 6 months on people's systems BEFORE it gets fixed. In the Open Source world, a lot of the vulnerabilities are found by people who just read the code. So they can take action, before it exists in the wild. The last major bug I heard about was patched in four hours of being found, and it was found by someone reading code and saying "That's insecure".

This is why I trust Linux. I use it for everything I do aside from games. Yes, I'll admit that Windows wins in the game department, because Linux wasn't targetted for real games until just a few years ago. So, that's why I have a dual-boot. I can go into Windows when I want to play games, and stay in Linux when I want to securly browse the web.

How much more secure is Linux? In a study done by a rather famous hacker (most of you won't know him) Kevin Mitnick, a lot. He used Honeypots, which are computers used to bait virii (like a honey pot to a bear) to see how long they would survive. The pots were out-of-the-box Windows and Linux install respectivly, no patches installed on either. The Windows boxes were compromised, on average, in four minutes, with the quickest time being 30 seconds. I can attest to the 30 seconds, as I've wiped a computer to get rid of a virus, and got it between the time Windows installed networking, and I could install a firewall. Note to self, always unplug windows until you're behind 3 firewalls. The Linux boxes survived, on average, months. I wish I could find the study online, but I can only find a different one that didn't use Linux. Oh well, you get the picture.

Now, what can you do about it? For starters, dual-boot your computer, so you can use either Windows or Linux. You can do anything in Linux as your could in Windows. It comes with Open Office, which works just like Microsoft Office, cd-burning software, instant messanging clients, dvd-playing software, just about anything you want. If you want help, I'll do it for ya, you can pick the distro, and we'll install together.

Those of you who are more adventerous can have a system entirely Linux. If you'd like to learn (and believe me, it's worth it) find and old peice of junk (not those 1 gHz you tell me are junk, but a 486 with 16 MB RAM) and we'll use that. It's all you need to learn how to use the console, and be a 1337 haxXor. Just kidding on the last part... or am I?

So, if you have any questions about Linux, feel free to post them in the comments, I'll answer any.