safety and speed of operating systems nick?

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Paul Barker
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#1 safety and speed of operating systems nick?

Post by Paul Barker »

having just had to reload windows to get rid of spyware.

all antivirus and antispyware ad dware and firewall prgrams that have evovled with the increased speed of cpu's have simply resulted in a machine aboutas useful as an 8 bit ibm xt.

we are not making pogress we are creating jobs for software writers and manufacturers of ever faster processors.

i am beginning to think that since my puter is very fast sans protection progrems and completely bloated out of usefullness with them that forme it is easier to bac up files routinely and take the risk of viruses to reinstall os on attack.

Anyhow what's this here ubantu like? Is it less bloated?

ps I do have a proper paid for windows xp.
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ed
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#2 Re: safety and speed of operating systems nick?

Post by ed »

Paul Barker wrote: we are not making pogress we are creating jobs for software writers and manufacturers of ever faster processors.

i am beginning to think that since my puter is very fast sans protection progrems and completely bloated out of usefullness with them that forme it is easier to bac up files routinely and take the risk of viruses to reinstall os on attack.

Anyhow what's this here ubantu like? Is it less bloated?

ps I do have a proper paid for windows xp.
right on!...yes we do progress by creating jobs for software writers....I feel I can speak freely now that I'm not one..so to speak......
if you go back 30 years...there were only a few of us...and if you looked in an average office , local govt for example, the accountants accounted, the clerics filed, the managers built empires(no that ones a joke) all for 100% of the day..but if you look now...the accountants account for 10% of the day, the clerics file for 10% of the day...the rest of the day they play with their desktop machines, email, forums, games etc etc....thats progress........30 years before the first example they all worked on the land.......the software writers have freed off a lot of time for some areas of business...no help to plumbers unfortunately.

2nd point: A lot of people in my experience do run machines unprotected, and do reload periodically...fine, except some of the insidious stuff that gets into their machines also rifles through their address files and moves on to more innocent victims......

3rd point: yeah ubuntu, or any flavour linux very slick in comparison to windows...I'd be there like a shot if the s/w I run was available on linux. If you're just running office type apps and accessing the wibbly wobbly web then its a viable alternative...try it, its free

apologies for jumping in on Nicks post...

Ed
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Paul Barker
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#3

Post by Paul Barker »

Thanks Ed,

The puter is useful to plumbers as I can keep all posible manufcaturers instructions (MI's) on it which would otherwise involve a mobile library. According to GSIUR (gas safety installation and use regs) "it is illegal to work on an appliance without the MI's" also "MI's should be left with the customer" but no customer ever has them, the onus is on us if we want to comply with the regs, to obtain them.

However I only need acrobat to read them, and run no other software not in the least bit interested in any of it, presumably there is a version of acrobat available to linux type OS's?
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#4

Post by Cressy Snr »

Hi Paul

I would suggest getting a Mac but this would involve buying new hardware
With your existing hardware Ubuntu Linux is one of the best Linux distributions for the home/smal business user.
You get OpenOffice free with the installation, which should take care of all your office needs including a spreadsheet for accounting etc which will read .xls files and a word processor that easily deals with Word files.

Adobe Reader for UNIX is available from the Adobe site so you should have no problem reading and printing PDF docs.

For web browsing you get the Linux version of FireFox which behaves identically to the Windows version but without the security issues.

Though the interface for Ubuntu is not as slick as Mac OSX it is far better than Windows and is just as secure as the Mac OS against viruses and spyware as it shares the same UNIX heritage.

It can be a bit of a pain to get working with printers but the GIMP project produces open source printer drivers that will allow you to use all the facilities on your present output device and 99.9% of the time they work beautifully.

Steve
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#5

Post by Nick »

Yep, you can read PDF's on Linux without problem.

If you are going to reinstall, it would be a good time to try something like Ubuntu.

Simply put, yes, its a lot less bloated, but it all comes down to what you mean by bloat. Without getting on too high a horse, you face two problems with MS Windows, they always feel its important to make things work out of the box, and to make sure that things can talk to each other. So if you take a stock installation of (say) XP, because of all the wizzy features, there are so many places that virus and malware writers can attack.

And the second problem, is because MS tries to keep Windows so easy to use, there is not real security system. Actually Windows NT does have a potentially good security system, its very similar to the VMS one, but it never gets used, because it would mean that the user was faced with problems getting anything working, so it gets bipassed. This means that any virus has no real problem taking control of the system.

Vista has tried to make things better. The normal way of running XP is to have every user have admin privs, so when that user is compromised, teh virus also has admin privs. Vista allows the user (even though he has admin privs) to not allow those privs to escape his control, by requiring the user to accept the transfer to admin privs. But I bet, most will turn this feature off as it is a hassle, and we are back to where we started.

Linux/Unix has a simpiler security system (ignoreing SELinux for the moment), and as long as you don't normally run as root, then its a lot harder for any virus to take control.

As for not using any protective software, well, dependign on how good your hardware filewall is, I would expect a Windows machine to be compromised within a day (assuming you actually use it for things involving the internet (web, email and so on). If you put a unprotected windows box on the internet with no protection, it would be compromised within ten minutes even without you doing anything, because of all the open ports on a normal home installation.

Also Windows suffers because of the desire to be faster at everything, so things like web browsing are moved inside the OS kernel instead of in user spaec where they should be, this means again, that any compromise can do more damage.

Kaye has been using linux on her mahine that she runs the dog rescue with for several years now, it works fine for her, there have been a few things I have had to do, but she is using a old Red Hat instalation. Most of what needed me to do, is now done automaticall by the newer distribs.

I don't know what apps you need, eveny most pure windows apps can be run usng wine (allows windows apps to run on x86 linux's).

Why not give it a go Paul, if you have problems you know my phone number, it would be interesting to see how you get on, and it might save you some time in the long run.
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#6

Post by Paul Barker »

OK I eventually managed to make the disk but it hangs the machine half way through trying to run every time.

don't have any more spare disks to make another.

Will have to be patient.

Meanwhile back to Gatesville virus magnet bloatwear.
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#7

Post by Nick »

Post any details about the machine you have (processor, disk, memory, any interfaces, modems, etc) and I will see if there are any special cases.
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#8

Post by Cressy Snr »

Hi Paul

You may think the machine has hung but it might not have.
You get the Ubuntu logo then are asked to choose install or boot plus a list of other stuff. Just hit enter which means you have chosento boot. You should get a bit of text going past then a black screen.

The black screen lasts for several minutes before anything else happens but if you wait it out you will eventually get to the Ubuntu desktop.

On the desktop there is a folder called Examples and an icon called "Install"

This is where you install from. Double click the install icon and away you go.

There could be something wrong but I would give it another go and wait it out.

What is happening is that the whole system has to load from the CD before you can even start installing hence the age it takes to load up initially. If you have an old drive it takes even longer.
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#9

Post by Paul Barker »

avent 7086

Specification
CPU Intel Celeron M 360 1.40GHz
Chipset SiS 661
Hard Drive 40GB UDMA
Memory 256MB PC2700/3200 DDR SODIMM (1 memory slot. Max 1GB) *
CD Drive DVD±RW
Screen 14.1" TFT (native resolution 1024 x 768)
Video Card SiS 661FX 64MB shared
Sound Card Realtek AC'97 audio
Network Card SiS 900 integrated fast ethernet
ZD 1211 802.11b+g USB Adapter
Modem Agere systems AC'97 modem
PC Card None
Ports 1x Modem
1x LAN
1x VGA
4x USB 2.0
1x Kensington Lock
1x Headphone
1x Microphone
1x PS/2
1x VGA
Touchpad Synaptics Touchpad
Battery Lithium Ion. Battery time approx 1.0 hours
Dimensions (HxWxD, in mm): 32x326x258
Weight 2.8kg
Made By ECS 321

ubutu found 153 corrupt files on self test

steve when it hangs it has finished reading neither dis ismoving or accessed . Igave it2hrs 2nd attempt, never moved from this hanging status as though it would never end.

On this version a menu appears imediately, you select option to run/install. It hangs before completion, maybe at one of the 153 corrupt files?
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#10

Post by richardcooper2k »

i use a free fire wall, sunbelt kerio; nod32 anti-virus; and AVG anti spyware which is also free. these don't seem to slow things down too much (i only have the anti spyware software running if i am doing a scan)(with windows xp)

the crucial thing is i use another bit of free software called sandboxie. this allows you to run programs in a 'sandbox'. which is isolated from the rest of your computer. if you pick up anything nasty, it can't get out of the sandbox and you can delete the contents of the sandbox. if you decide something is safe you can transfer it out of the sandbox. you can run web browsers inside the sandbox

i have had no problems with this set up. be interested to hear other peoples experience
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#11

Post by Nick »

Hmm, I must admit, I haven't tried installing over a copy of windows, instead of a clean install.

"ubutu found 153 corrupt files on self test "

that doesn't sound that great.
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#12

Post by Darren »

Now this might be a long shot, (I downloaded ubutu as well)

Does anyone know if it's possible to load Ubutu onto a separate hard drive via the usb port and use it from there or does it have to be C drive?

I only ask as currently I need C drive as it is. Even though I've been invaded by some bloody software that's a real pia.
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#13

Post by Nick »

Not sure if its possible to boot from a USB drive. Maybe you could try one of the live disks, so you boot from CD instead of loading the OS onto your machine.

EDIT: Looking at this, it should be possible, it depends if your bios supports it

http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~shaher/Bootable_USB.html

http://librenix.com/?page=USB%20Drive
Last edited by Nick on Mon Jul 09, 2007 12:27 am, edited 2 times in total.
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#14

Post by Darren »

I can boot a windows 98 boot disk from my usb a: drive or is that a very different matter to booting a USB hard drive?
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#15

Post by Darren »

Just seen your edit Nick, thanks i will look at it tomorrow.

I've got a banging headache tonight so too much at the mo but if I can boot it and run from a separate USB drive that would be brill as i would have time to get used to it and not depend on it right away.

See if I can do something with it tomorrow.
Thanks
Darren
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