education.zdnet.com — My oldest son, creator of flame wars, finally discovered that you can only surf to the nether regions of the Internet so many times before even Vista business succumbs to malware. His computer an unusable mass of pop-ups, spewing traffic over our network actually asked me tonight to reinstall Linux for him.
Oct 22, 2008 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountOct 23, 2008
The point being that lots of people are not as clued up as you! Much better to install an OS that is highly unlikely to be infected than to try and explain what's safe and what isn't.Windows - remember don't click on this, don't run that, don't agree to thatLinux - Do what you want
avian00Oct 23, 2008
The difference is, you can configure a stable Linux installation and give it to a newbie without root permissions. The machine is still very usable, and you don't have to worry about them screwing it up. Try running Windows as a non-admin user. Many programs refuse to even launch.
Closed AccountOct 23, 2008
And that is precisely the problem. They're all crap in that regard.
bytemeaholeOct 23, 2008
Story boiled down to three sentences...There is no patch for stupidity. Fortunately, there is Linux. Unfortunately, the stupid are too stupid to actually install it themselves, so they have to have Dad do it for them...
Closed AccountOct 23, 2008
And your point being?
ccmachinedOct 25, 2008
programs requiring root for installation makes no difference. the know-nothing user will still type in their password at a prompt if it asks, claiming it "needs admin access". at least a few things on linux require this, like user management and network preferences.the OS shouldn't have to protect itself from malware that the user it ATTEMPTING to install. what we're talking about as "security" is websites and browsers security. IE is a joke. even with FF, on Windows there are way more holes and backdoors to exploit. even a .JPG can infect your system!
ccmachinedOct 25, 2008
yes, becuase the son ran a complete Vista install. and THEN installed all needed drivers on a blocky 800x600 default screen. buried.
wendall911Nov 2, 2008
Why don't you shuffle off the the Windows fanboy forum then? I understand that a majority of people use Windows. But filling up what could be useful discussions about Linux/Unix related topics with Windows fanboy crap is just annoying. I can see by the number of digs you have that there is a strong majority of lame ass people digging Windows comments on Linux related stories. Just lame. It killed Slashdot, now digg is suffering the same crap.