RE: [gentoo-user] antivirus

["Bob Young" <BYoung@nucoretech.com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: neil [mailto:neil@ep.mine.nu]
Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 11:23 AM
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] antivirus

Jarry wrote:

> I got viruses many times.

Over the past 20-odd years, I have had machines running many versions of
DOS, all versions of Windows since Windows 286, all versions of OS/2
since 1.3 and several distributions of Linux. I have never, ever seen a
virus. I have to wonder what you are doing to be so "unfortunate".


Here, here. It's really not about the OS, or what "protection" software is
or isn't installed, it's about the habits and practices of the user. Any
computer can (and probably will) be compromised if the user is careless or
naive about what they do and where they go on the Net. Like you, I've run
different versions of DOS, Windows (NT derivatives only), OS/2, & Linux. I
did get a virus once in the early days when running DOS, but since then I've
never had a Windows or Linux box compromised by a virus or malware, and
that's without running any anti-virus software of any kind on any of the
Windows boxes.

 FWIW one of those Windows boxes is currently a web/email/DNS/FTP server
with seven public IPs serving between four and seven domains. There is also
a Gentoo Linux box doing secondary DNS for the domains, the windows box has
a firewall but no AV software at all, both servers (one Windows & one
Gentoo), have remained clean and stable for several years now, as do all of
my various Windows and Gentoo workstations, none of which run any antivirus
software.

In short if a user is getting infected a lot using Windows, switching to
Linux is not curing the root cause. The basic problem is the user needs to
understand what s/he is doing that's allowing malicious code to execute on
their system and stop doing it. In the vast majority of Windows cases,
simply *not* routinely logging on with admin privileges would probably stop
99% plus of the infections.

Regards,
Bob Young



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