Stolen from Car Carry post

[gigag04]

As long as Microsoft keeps their operating system screwed up they are needed and keep making money

What exactly is screwed up about MS OS's?

Not trying to flame ya, just curious if I can clear up something.

-nick

[tehlump]

As long as Microsoft keeps their operating system screwed up they are needed and keep making money

What exactly is screwed up about MS OS's?

Not trying to flame ya, just curious if I can clear up something.

-nick

I'm curious too.

I make my living working on MS OS's and honestly I don't do much. Since the roll over to Windows XP, I have experienced almost 0 problems...to put it another way, of the ~65 PCs that I am directly responsible for that have some flavor of Windows installed, I would imagine that I run about 99.99999% uptime. Of the downtime I do have, probably 75% is due to human error or hardware failure.

My work PC is a Dell with Windows XP. In the 2 years I have worked on this particular machine I can't remember it EVER crashing. Not once. My work pc is never turned off...I remember to reboot once every couple of weeks.

My home PC is windows XP I remember a few crashes, but they're always fixed by a reboot. I'm talking less than 5 in the 3 years I've ran winxp on it. My home PC runs 24x7 as a web gateway.

I think that people get wrapped up in their dislike for MS's business practices and that dislike is carried over to their products. Win95 had a bad reputation that was justified. Win98 sucked, but was great when they released 98se. ME was a stinker but I never had any real issues with it.
Win2k was awesome and WinXP only improved on 2k.

[Blazen]

I think most complain about the security; most the viruses and what not are aimed at MS. I have used MS products in all of my jobs and don't really have that many issues. Your only secure as you want to be. When outbreaks do happen, most can't patch fast enough or figure they will not get hit. I think most think they are not a big shop and therefore will not take a hit. Things will always break, rather its hardware or software...

[tehlump]

I think most complain about the security; most the viruses and what not are aimed at MS. I have used MS products in all of my jobs and don't really have that many issues. Your only secure as you want to be. When outbreaks do happen, most can't patch fast enough or figure they will not get hit. I think most think they are not a big shop and therefore will not take a hit. Things will always break, rather its hardware or software...

You're right.

My organization has approximately 500-600 PCs. We off and on battled with the flavor of the month virus for a long time. I suggested constantly that we needed to implement a forced update schedule. My ideas were always back-burnered for cost reasons until Corporate's systems were hit especially hard during one outbreak.
My PCs were fine because I manually kept them all reasonably updated.

We got the SUS updater the next day! LOL

The vast majority of 'security' breaches have already been addressed by MS. Automatic updates are a good thing!

[Blazen]

Automatic updates are a good thing!

For the most part these are good. At the desktop level, I agree, but at the server level, no. Some of these updates break things. Critical servers I always do by hand, non-critical, I normally let the auto update handle it.

WSUS is a good thing, once you get it set up correctly and you get your GPO's set right as well...

[gigag04]

the reason MS is targed is that its the most widely used.

why write a virus for 10% (mac) of computer users

[moriar]

The specifics that I am aware of regarding MS-Windows:

All the way up to Windows 98, stability was a significant issue. Mostly due to a faulty program being able to crash the whole system. Windows 2000 and foward are better about this, using the NT kernel. (The Kernel is essentially the engine of the Operating System. When you're driving, you never touch the engine but intstead touch the controls. Same with an OS.)

IE ( Internet Explorer) is integrated into the OS. Deeply. You can't remove it. This means that any security flaw in IE is a security flaw in Windows.

User-Permissions is a big difference between Windows and UNIX-like systems. Under UNIX, you don't login with an account capable of destroying everything and breaking the system. This way, if you get hit with a virus/etc then it won't be able to do more than mess up your own account. Under Windows, most of the time people are logged in with "Administrator" privledges, and thus any virus under their name can tromp about like Godzilla in a China Shop.

MS doesn't have a very good track record of security. Until Windows XP, there was no integrated firewall. Until XP's second Service Pack, if you enabled the firewall then Windows would bring the network connection online when booting, then activate the firewall about a minute later.

Windows does have advantages, however. One of these advantages is also a flaw, depending on the person.

Windows is very easy to use. It's designed to be easy to use, to the extent that it can get in the way of more experienced users. Sometimes it will do things it thinks you want done, rather than do what you tell it to.

Windows almost has a monopoly, so most makers of hardware make drivers for their hardware to work with Windows. (This also leads to some instability, wherein crappy drivers can crash things. I had a RealTek network card that would cause my system to goto the Blue Screen of Death if I downloaded too fast, but using the Japanese manufacture's drivers fixed that.)

Windows also has a wider selection of games and assorted software, though this is possibly also a function of being the biggest market to target.

If you want to try a non-MS operating system, I recommend looking into Knoppix. Burn it to a cd, pop it into the drive and reboot. Runs off the CD, and doesn't modify the hard drive. Nice way to try something new, for the cost of a blank CD.

[gigag04]

IE ( Internet Explorer) is integrated into the OS. Deeply. You can't remove it. This means that any security flaw in IE is a security flaw in Windows.

This isn't true. http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 07&sd=tech

User-Permissions is a big difference between Windows and UNIX-like systems. Under UNIX, you don't login with an account capable of destroying everything and breaking the system.

Agreed. We fixed the problem at work by making EVERYONE a domain user, unless we trust them not to screw up thier own box.

MS doesn't have a very good track record of security. Until Windows XP, there was no integrated firewall. Until XP's second Service Pack, if you enabled the firewall then Windows would bring the network connection online when booting, then activate the firewall about a minute later.

These points are kind of unrelated...or at least the firewall doesn't support the negative trend in security. I still maintain that all OS's are flawed, but MS is exploited the most as it is the biggest target [see you're comments on market]

Windows almost has a monopoly

mo·nop·o·ly Audio pronunciation of "monopoly" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (m-np-l)
n. pl. mo·nop·o·lies

1. Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service: “Monopoly frequently... arises from government support or from collusive agreements among individuals� (Milton Friedman).
2. Law. A right granted by a government giving exclusive control over a specified commercial activity to a single party.
3.
1. A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity.
2. A commodity or service so controlled.
4.
1. Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth.
2. Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly.

--Not quite. You are free to use whatever OS you choose. MS has the market share because the majority of people are exercising thier choice in that direction. But you have options.

If you want to try a non-MS operating system, I recommend looking into Knoppix.

Yeah - it's entertaining. But Linux is not very plausible in a widespread real world desktop application. The learning curve is steep, and most users are not savvy enough to edit an x86.config file to get some small feature changed. AND - it is most definately not the way of the future. Open Source can only get so far before people get greedy [ie redhat].


I'm not attacking you at all - just enjoying the computer nerd banter, so let's not fight or get irritated. I'm not, but I just don't want it to head that way. Feel free to respond though for sure.

-nick

[jhutto]

"This isn't true. http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 07&sd=tech "

Please read the article. What this article explains is how to revert to a previous version of IE. not remove it entirely. I have never attempted to remove IE, however I see no clear way of doing so.

[Mithras61]

IE ( Internet Explorer) is integrated into the OS. Deeply. You can't remove it. This means that any security flaw in IE is a security flaw in Windows.

This isn't true. http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 07&sd=tech

-nick

"This isn't true. http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 07&sd=tech "

Please read the article. What this article explains is how to revert to a previous version of IE. not remove it entirely. I have never attempted to remove IE, however I see no clear way of doing so.

If I recall correctly, this very subject was at the heart of one of the anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft. The judge in the case ruled against MS, but the reasoning behind his ruling was technically very flawed (the old "I can uninstall it from the Control Panel" argument) compared to his instructions to completely remove IE. As I recall, Microsoft maintains that the code at the heart of IE is also very much at the heart of the Windows OS, and to remove IE completely from the operating ssytem would leave the OS itself non-functional without a major rewrite of the code. Knowing that many programmers make their code modular tends to support this idea (why write what I can borrow/link to elsewhere?).

At any rate, I've found Windows to be stable unless it either gets misconfigured (e.g. - user error, trojans, virii, etc.) of the hardware is unstable (not really the OS' fault). I avoid the majority of the issues with IE simply by using a more rare browser (I like Opera, actually, but some prefer Firefox or Mozilla). Not exposing the inner workings of the OS to the Internet seems to make a huge difference (of course, it helps that I have antivirus, several types of anti-spyware and several firewalls between me & the Internet).

[txinvestigator]

"This isn't true. http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 07&sd=tech "

Please read the article. What this article explains is how to revert to a previous version of IE. not remove it entirely. I have never attempted to remove IE, however I see no clear way of doing so.

[KD5NRH]

Yeah - it's entertaining. But Linux is not very plausible in a widespread real world desktop application. The learning curve is steep, and most users are not savvy enough to edit an x86.config file to get some small feature changed.

Time to toss your old RedHat 5.0 disks and try something new; I'm running Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, sometimes Kubuntu, and sometimes Slax, among others, on three and sometimes four systems ranging from a 200MHz to a 1.4GHz, and I don't even remember what x86.config looks like anymore. I haven't manually edited configs for anything but a few legacy apps I like the familiarity of since I was running Slackware on a 486. Nearly everything has a GUI config now.

As user friendly as it can be, I wouldn't recommend Ubuntu's way of getting around the need for a root password to anybody who wants to be able to fine tune much - PCLinuxOS seems to work really well, though, and keeps my desktop user-friendly enough for SWMBO to use it from time to time.

[cyphur]

I've been messing around with OpenSuSE lately, and if I wanted to, I could configure everything via GUI, and one that is honestly more precise than Windows'. Windows requires a great deal of digging for lots of tweaks, whereas those tweaks are first-menu options within Linux.

Also, with OpenSuse, you can fine tune the install package for different users so they get different programs installed - much like creating an "image" for Winblows.


Some of my biggest complaints with Windows are: its handling of temporary files, memory leaks, poor file transfers, and its HORRIBLE handling of the TCP/IP stack - it sucks. As a network engineer I change my computer's IP address several times a day, and I wish it would work without having to disable my NIC and re-enabling it every time I change the IP or the default gateway.

[Liberty]

I've been messing around with OpenSuSE lately, and if I wanted to, I could configure everything via GUI, and one that is honestly more precise than Windows'. Windows requires a great deal of digging for lots of tweaks, whereas those tweaks are first-menu options within Linux.

Also, with OpenSuse, you can fine tune the install package for different users so they get different programs installed - much like creating an "image" for Winblows.


Some of my biggest complaints with Windows are: its handling of temporary files, memory leaks, poor file transfers, and its HORRIBLE handling of the TCP/IP stack - it stinks. As a network engineer I change my computer's IP address several times a day, and I wish it would work without having to disable my NIC and re-enabling it every time I change the IP or the default gateway.

You gotta love Open Office!!

[tfrazier]

SuSE? They were a great distribution from Germany until Novell bought them, now I'm not so sure. I'm on the razor's edge with Fedora Core VI 64bit running multiple web sites from the same IP using name-based virtual hosts. No support, no need, have RedHat and Fedora geek buddies all over the net who manage to answer every question in minutes. I haven't used MS products of any flavor or type (neither server, desktop, nor app, by golly!) for personal systems for years. But I'm glad Bill Gate's company is still in business, keeps me in steak and potatos running a group of LAN admins to keep all those little windows pizza boxes configured and humming along with the latest patches and hot-fixes.

I will admit I've had a couple of surprise outages in the past with a kernel update here and there, but those were easy to back out of.