OT Anti virus sorftware

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

[Richard]

Nothing is 100% safe, so stop worrying.

[T i m]

<snip>

Typical reply of a Linux user (or Brexiteer etc) when all the long term security flaws are revealed. Before that, it's 'much safer' than Windows and to the level that means it's worth all the extra aggravation. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Richard]

Where did I differentiate between Linux and anything else? Like I said, stop worrying as it seems to be feeding some form of paranoia.

[tim...]

That's never going to happen because the Unix community like to feel superior by being able to understand something that everybody else don't understand

tim

[T i m]

<snip>

Whilst I'm sure there is some of that, bistros like Mint / Ubuntu have gone a long way towards making Linux 'Windows alike' and therefore more 'familiar' to many more people. I don't mean the DE particularly (although the likes of Mate / Cinnamon are pretty similar, without trying to be a copy etc), but all the workings behind the DE.

Like Android hides Linux behind it's DE to make it easy for people to use 'Linux', as the OSX DE hides BSD (as much as the Windows DE does).

So, whilst it *is* (Mint / Ubuntu etc) getting better, it's taking it's time and until it hides more of the OS behind the GUI DE (because 'most people' don't want to see the OS these days) and more programs become easy to install (as with a Windows 'setup.exe' that installs on all versions of Windows) then it will stay stuck around 5% of the desktop OS market.

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

You didn't, but that's what this sub thread was covering. It's the Linux (// OSX) fanboys who try to use the inherent AV abilities of their OS's to justify that as an advantage over Windows, and whilst I'm sure there is some merit to that, for many the cost (of the entire OS) isn't worth it. So it's not down to risk (or financial cost), it's down to convenience / compatibility etc.

Who is worrying (and did you know repeating something invalid doesn't make it valid). ;-)

Still not too good with picking up on this human behaviour stuff are you? ;-)

Clue. This is a 'discussion group' you know?

Cheers, T i m

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've been using free AVG and Spybot for years on a few PCs. Not yet had a virus, etc. But I suppose it depends where you browse, etc. I don't generally use them for email.

[tim...]

I used to work for a company that had desktop Linux installed on their PC (I forget what).

every so often we would get a prompt to say that your system needed to be updated and to click here to accept it

and then the first question it asked was "What version of XYZ are you running"

I don't f****ng know, surely it is you who should be telling me that

tim

[Bill]

In message <qe5amu$nim$ [e-mail], tim... <tims_new [e-mail] writes

When I used to write small Windows helper programs for the software we sold, the first section was always where the program established the environment we were loading into.

I don't know whether Linux has improved yet, but the killers for me, apart from the lack of drivers, were the awful audio interfaces.

I purchased a very impressive DAW software, Harrison Mixbus, written for Linux and Windows, specifically to compare the two OS's in the hope that I could move to one of the audio orientated Linux OS's. In the end I abandoned it because jumping between recording, mixing, editing, playback and keeping the monitoring working, meant constant fiddling with the underlying Linux audio controls.

It was a terrible shame.

[John Rumm]

Could you clarify what you mean by spammy in this context?

[dennis]

More crap from someone that obviously doesn't run either.

Free avast will do a pop "ad" up every few days, win10 never has.

[dennis]

Win7 is not better than win 10 as people that have run both will know.

You leave the help pop ups on? I thought you knew how to use windows.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I would say that 90% probability you are lying.

Since I have never seen THAT in a linux.

It usually asks for your password.

[dennis]

Rubbish, you have to download it to instal it and it can't do that unless you do it.

The only annoying thing in the installer is you have to untick instal crome if you don't want it.

As for screen readers then that's probably because they don't update them very often so they don't understand many new features in software and browsers.

Win10 is fine without avast or any other AV if you avoid the obviously dangerous sites.

[dennis]

But the majority of linux "developers" don't understand enough of the software to do any development so they just customise stuff and fork about.

I worked with some of the developers that created SVR5 so I know a bit about how it works but I wouldn't try to develope stuff in the kenel other than drivers.

At Marconi we did actually develop and app then ran in the kernel as the machine just wasn't fast enough to cope with the constant switching in and out of user space. I was involved in the design but I didn't code it, I had other things to do like developing an X25 communications card for moving billing data about and the system design for the unix machines handling backup and recovery of the exchange processors.

[dennis]

Modern AV doesn't just rely on signature scanning. Things like Avast do analysis on the type of system calls they do and can catch new viruses by the way they behave.

[dennis]

We have seen examples of that in the past, we have even had exploits fixed and reintroduced a few months later when they do an update.

We have also seen fixes that remove the exploit but can't/don't fix any secondary infection that may have been done while the system was broken. The classic response is "it doesn't take long to reinstall so we don't bother to check and fix"

[dennis]

There are no AV abilities in linux. There are protection mechanisms like file permissions but they are also in windows unless you decide to use a really old file system.

Like wise there are kernel level protection mechanisms which are pretty much the same as windows too.

The biggest difference is that in old versions of windows many users run as "root" which linux users don't. Newer versions of windows don't run as "root".

This is why linux users are forever comparing linux with XP and not win10.

They know win10 will more than give them a run for their money so they try other tacks like its spammy whatever that's supposed to mean.

[Bill]

In message <DgsNE.55535$ [e-mail], "dennis@home" [e-mail] writes

Only some people will believe that.

Those of us who want an operating system that is stable and whose set up rarely changes will need something other than Windows 10.

I for one need an operating system, not a "service" that can change overnight beneath what I am doing.

I know of several people who, like me, run W2k, XP and W7 on various machines for specific purposes. Some of them never connect the machines to the internet. I rarely do, although nowadays it is becoming awkward to install additional software with the advent of installation stubs rather than full installation downloads.

I am typing this on a W10 laptop running a W7 VM to run the email/news client software that I prefer. I also run a W7 laptop about equally.

The one advantage that Windows always had over Apple, Linux etc. was its flexibility wrt hooking up specialist or even homebuilt hardware and programs and using them for all manner of odd purposes. I would suggest that all that is now being thrown away. One could be reasonably sure that W7 today would still be more or less the same tomorrow. With W10, I don't know that.

Maybe it's time for me to move towards the Raspberry Pi area.