Originally Posted by TheAnimus I personally don't see why so many people use linux, its kernel is young, week, and generally not very good. Its not EASY because the kernel isn't remotely modular at runtime (like NT is) but BSD dosen't fix that.
Because Linux is easy to use, secure, fast, and constantly undergoing rapid development. Linux is equally as monolithic as BSD... NT is excessively modular, any crap can plug itself into the kernel, with a horrible and insecure file structure, and has virtually no established standards at all.
Originally Posted by TheAnimus All i was objecting to is saying that linux dosen't have spyware, this is wrong, i got a malware package once of a rather shifty UK mirror service, and i didn't check the MD5. Admittedly, if you ONLY use distro packages, this is a lot harder.
Right, so you used an unoffical mirror, didn't run it past md5, and thats suppose to be the kernels fault?.. you could equally do something as dumb as that with BSD.. Use a projects official website, and use their mirror list to get source packages.. This is one reason why I use Gentoo, automatic offical mirror downloads, automatically checks the source package against md5.
Originally Posted by TheAnimus A functioning linux OS has viruses and worms like any other, a lot for PHP and Perl require known code to be present to exploit.
And how many 'linux' viruses and worms are there?.. just over a handful, hardly any of which can actually do harm to current software.. how many does Windows have?.. hundreds of thousands.. Again, the issues with PHP and Perl aren't a Linux issue, they are an issue with any system that uses these engines, Windows, GNU/Linux, *BSD
Originally Posted by TheAnimus I'd recomend if you want to make linux more secure, not using Perl (but pretty much everyone recomends that).
It still depends on *what* you use perl for.
Originally Posted by TheAnimus Also make sure your using MD5 passwords and shadow passwords (google the terms if you don't know what they are).
shadow passwords have been a standard way of storing passwords on a GNU/Linux systems for years, its default by all distros, MD5 and other methods are also optional at installation.
Originally Posted by TheAnimus In short madmonkey, have nothing installed you don't know what it is and why you'd want it. Use ipchains to stop everything, and don't run as root.
netfilter is also used by default on current distros.
You need to clam down and stop filling the guys head full of nonsense, you're driviling on about issues longgg addressed. if you don't like GNU/Linux, don't use it.. GNU/Linux offers freedom, if you want to be restricted by all means, go for it.
Originally Posted by Matt1eD Spent the whole morning trying to set up OpenBSD properly by experimentation (prefer that to manuals). Then what happened? It refused to connect to any FTP or HTTP server to download the files
So much as BSD being as easy to use as Linux.