July 24, 2008
by sjvn01
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You did patch your Linux servers with the new DNS patch didn’t you? Well, if you haven’t, get on it. Now.
The genie is out of the bottle. According to Robert McMillan in PC World, the creators of the Metasploit hacking toolkit have included a viable DNS server attack in their ‘penetration testing toolkit.”
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July 24, 2008
by sjvn01
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Firefox 3 is good. Firefox 3, plus the right extensions, is great.
Now, a lot of people publish lists of ‘best’ extensions. It’s quick and easy to make these lists. One difference between my list and some of those “99 Must Have, Best Firefox Extensions!” is that is the real list of the extensions that I use every day. These don’t just sound good, they work well. These are the extensions that have transformed Firefox for me from just a mere Web browser to an essential part of my electronic office.
To me there are two essential Firefox extensions. I would no more run Firefox without it than I would run Internet Explorer. The first of these is Google’s Toolbar for Firefox. This isn’t so much a mere extension as it is a bridge to an entire library of useful Web tools I’m not fond of sticking toolbars on my browser. I’d rather have the screen real-estate for the Web site I’m visiting. When it comes to the Google Toolbar, though, it’s no brainier. I install Firefox, I install the Google Toolbar. It’s that simple.
July 23, 2008
by sjvn01
4 Comments
KACE, a systems management appliance company, announced that their recent survey of IT administrators showed that 60 percent of them have no plans to deploy Vista. That’s almost 10% more turning their backs on Vista then in KACE’s last survey in November 2007 . According to the company press release, “42 percent of them said they would consider deployment of alternative operating systems, such as Mac OS and Linux, in order to avoid a migration to Vista.”
11% of Windows users have already decided to switch rather than ‘upgrade’ to Vista. Of that number, 29% plan to changeover to the Mac, followed by 24% to Red Hat Linux, 21% to Ubuntu Linux, and 15% to SUSE Linux. The remainder plan on switching to another version of Linux.
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July 23, 2008
by sjvn01
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Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu Linux, wants desktop Linux to "shoot beyond the Mac." Can it?
Shuttleworth was speaking to the open-source faithful at OSCon in Portland, Ore., but I’m sure even they had their doubts.
The Linux desktop is a good, workable one. I’ll take any modern Linux desktop over Windows Vista any day of the week, and the better ones do everything that Windows XP SP3 can do and more. Beating the Mac though? That’s another matter.
Today’s Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard, is a work of the user-interface designer art. My wife recently bought a MacBook Pro, and as I’ve been migrating her data and applications from her elderly XP-powered ThinkPad, I’ve been reminded of just how smoothly integrated everything really is on a Mac. It’s like driving a top-of-the-line Mercedes sports sedan.
There’s a price though that you pay for that wonderful integration of form and function, of application and operating system, and it’s not just the price-tag: it’s all totally proprietary. Apple, and Apple alone, controls the Mac experience. Mac clone maker Psystar, lasted just long enough to show that it really could make a viable Mac clone when Apple fell on them like a ton of bricks with a cease and desist lawsuit that one attorney believes is likely to "put Psystar out of business."
For better, and for worse, the Mac, and Apple’s other top devices like the iPod and iPhone, are the epitome of proprietary design. Everything fits together; everything works, because everything is under Apple’s control. Linux has taken an entirely different course.
Linux distributions start from a common base, the Linux kernel, but then split off as they compete with each other to be the best of the best. Rather than a communism, as Bill Gates would have it, open source is all about Darwinism. It’s non-stop competition where only the best survive.
So, today, to name only some of the most popular distributions, you have a choice of openSUSE, Ubuntu, and Fedora. On top of that, you have a choice of different user-interfaces. The major ones are KDE and GNOME, but others like Enlightenment also have their supporters. And, don’t get me started on the far too many ways there are to install software in Linux.
This competition forces Linux desktops to evolve very quickly. That’s why, while Microsoft has been stumbling with its Vista failure, all of the major Linux desktops zoomed by it. Today, I can still see why Windows users would still use XP over Linux, but Vista? Please!
As fast as the Linux desktop evolves though, it’s hard for me to see it ‘catching’ up with the Mac OS. Their fundamentally different development approaches lead to quite different desktop experiences. With Linux, you tend to get more choices and more power over your desktop. Mac gives you less choice but a more consistent experience. To me, it’s like the difference between a manual and automatic transmission car.
No matter how much the Linux desktop evolves it’s not going to turn into an automatic. Even when Linux does move in that direction, as I would argue it does with the GNOME interface, it will never equal the Mac’s integration of application, operating system and hardware. To even try to equal the Mac experience, a vendor would need not just to be a Linux distributor, but a software vendor and hardware manufacturer as well.
"Can we go right past Apple in the user experience we deliver?" Shuttleworth asked his audience. I’m afraid the answer is no.
On the other hand, Linux has other virtues that the Mac can’t deliver. It’s open, it’s flexible, and it gives the user far more control over their desktop.
So, while I can’t see Linux ever equaling the Mac at what a Mac does, I can see it being its equal in capability. It’s just a matter of choice. Would you rather drive an automatic or a manual? Me, I like both, but at day’s end, I prefer driving manual transmission cars and having the final say on what happens and what doesn’t on my Linux desktop.
July 22, 2008
by sjvn01
22 Comments
When you buy a new PC today, unless you hunt down a Linux system or you buy a Mac, you’re pretty much stuck with Vista. Sad, but true.
So, when I had to get a new PC in a hurry, after one of my PCs went to the big bit-ranch in the sky with a fried motherboard, the one I bought, a Dell Inspiron 530S from my local Best Buy came pre-infected with Vista Home Premium. Big deal. It took me less than an hour to install Linux Mint 5 Elyssa R1 on it.
As expected, everything on this 2.4GHz Intel Core2 Duo Processor E4600-powered PC ran perfectly with Mint. But, then it struck me, everyone is talking about having to buy Vista systems and then ‘downgrading’ them to XP Pro, how hard really is it to do that.? Since I had left half the 500BG SATA hard drive unpartitioned, I decided to install XP SP3 on it to see how much, if any, trouble I’d run into. The answer: a lot.
July 22, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments
The open-source way of creating programs is still the best way, just don’t confuse it with being the perfect way — there’s no such thing.
A recent report claims that one of the fundamental benefits of open-source development, the co-called Law of Many Eyes is wrong. The idea behind the law is that since anyone can read the source code and find problems with it, they can then either fix them or report them back to the community. The end result is that you get better software.
The study, by Fortify Software, a company that makes development tools for checking security, found that many popular open source software programs contain significant security holes. I can’t take this study too seriously. After all, what else is Fortify going to say? “Open-source’s Law of Many Eyes works great. You don’t need our products?” I don’t think so.
Here’s what I think. I think the Law of Many Eyes, or as Eric Raymond phrased it in his seminal work on open source, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” does work. All you need do is watch how quickly open-source projects progress and how quickly they fix bugs to know that.