Dec 31, 2003 05:08 PM
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(Updated Dec 31, 2003 05:14 PM)
Few years back Linux was more like an alien operating system popping up sometimes in movies or was seen in geeks machine. But recently it has jumped in the arena to compete against our very known operating system Windows.
Linux now has many variants but personally I stick to Red Hat. Suse is a new variant that has given a tough competition to Windows in a very small amount of time. Well! ''freeBSD'' and other variants are also good but after testing securities of these operating systems I found Red Hat very stable and that's why I suppose it is called Red Hat (Black Hats are hackers, White Hats good ones, guess where Red Hat falls ??)
Technically speaking what I found as one of the smartest things about Red Hat is that even if a hacker breaks into a shell through an SUID root program, he won't be able to get a root shell. Red Hat inherently does not have the property of giving a root shell through a SUID root program. Hence many buffer overflow exploits that work on ''freeBSD'' or other variants get a raw deal from Red Hat.
Linux has already captured the server market. For those of you who do not know what exactly a server is, let me tell you that it is a machine that serves you with various things and is almost transparent at times. This page has also come to you through a server which might be possibly to your surprise running Linux Red Hat or Suse. Now being extremely stable Linux is very much preferred over Windows in networking and server market. Even from security point of view, Linux has many built in features to avoid penetration unlike Windows.
So far what many saw was the improvement of the features in the management part of Linux. But now Linux too has started to improve upon its Graphical User Interface to capture the Desktop market. With best features to maintain your privacy on public or home computer, you can pratically hide everything and anything from your parents, friends and hackers. Without a login it is impossible to get into Linux. Again, there is a default setting which has to be removed to make it perfectly safe at Login Prompt.
Sounds impossible but it is true that Linux does not have any virus. Many might start contradicting on this issue but if you remove all the impossibilities, what remains is the truth, no matter how improbable it is. Linux has something called USER Level Rights. Most of the time it is this where people make mistake and blame Linux. Sometimes programs are run with their default (sometimes default settings are at times unsafe) settings. These things allow hackers to gain root access. But then your ignorance cannot be confused with the weakness of the operating system.
At the end, no matter what, Linux is the safest currently. And surprisingly now you have all the softwares for it. Recently Suse has come up with something that would let you even install your Windows softwares in Linux and run them from there.
So all those who have always kept themselves away from this Operating System should keep it in one of their partition. Someday it might save you millions.
Greets to Linux
regards
Tahseen
