news.softpedia.com — Yesterday, November 27th, the Ubuntu developers discovered yet another security issue (actually, more than one) in the Linux kernel packages. These vulnerabilities affect the following Ubuntu distributions: 6.06 LTS, 7.10, 8.04 LTS and 8.10 (also applies to Kubuntu, Edubuntu and Xubuntu).
Nov 28, 2008 View in Crawl 4
diggproofNov 29, 2008
1longtime are you serious? That's one site and it's a site for web developers, those numbers don't reflect actual market share.
smotpokerNov 30, 2008
#1 Do you have a source to verify that the bug existed in Linux as well? From what I remember and read just now googling it primarily affected BSDs. The only mentions of Linux suggest it was unaffected (probably because Linux usually uses gnu utilities/libs for fs reading which were created by RMS/GNU in an effort to avoid proprietary applications well after Unix was developed).#2 It took 25 years to produce a significant/noticeable impact and get detected. Fixing it only took a few days at most I assume
edwinjoseNov 30, 2008
I updated out of this problem already.
jayjaytooNov 30, 2008
"Due to an unavoidable ABI change, the kernel packages have a new version number, which will force you to reinstall or recompile all third-party kernel modules you might have installed. For example, after the upgrade to the above version of your kernel package, a software such as VirtualBox will NOT work anymore, therefore you must recompile its kernel module by issuing a specific command in the terminal. Moreover, if you use the linux-restricted-modules package, you have to update it as well to get modules that work with the new Linux kernel version."You put the whose-it in the whats-where? I'm outta here. Windows, take me back!!!(I kid, I kid, but you get the point)
kingoftheringsNov 30, 2008
I'm gonna hop on Linus's side here, and say that people need to stop making a big deal over security fixes. They're just like regular bug fixes, and I don't see flashing lights on those.
honoredmuleNov 30, 2008
How the hell is that in any way a distinction from Linux? Anyone running a Linux network has the same capability.Far better yet, they could use a distro like Debian stable and have a significant issue once in the history of operating systems, and never any downtime or service interruptions caused by updates.And yes I did read your comment. You said "patches are safe," and then proceeded to describe how Microsoft customers are able to protect themselves from the patches-that-never-cause-problems until they're sure they /actually/ won't cause a problem.