On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 5:31 PM, Anton Aylward
Tyro says he's excited by such matters as 'a secure environment'.
What I meant by 'a secure environment' is that using Windows was not that secured and that now I realize, even without learning Linux! I feel exciting, that how secured would I be feeling at the time when I would have learned the Linux, a great discover!
As I keep saying, the effort and complication required to add another partition and file system at installation time is trivial and the benefits are non trivial.
Correct, I just go with a suggested reading before doing anything like that.
"Beginner" does not mean "Stupid" or incapable or learning. He has to "take the training wheels off" sometime.
I do agree with you.
This isn't throwing him in the deep end; we've given him a great deal of material and references and encouraged experimentation. We should be positive about him progressing.
Adding /tmp at installation is a small step.
I definitely try that.
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:19 PM, Anton Aylward
I'm glad you're excited; you're following a great tradition. Some of here pre-date Windows and can only attribute its popularity to (a) massive marketing and (b) pandering to the lowest common denominator, those unwilling to learn or experiment.
Yes, and it was the majority of people (earlier)!
Linux can be secured,
I guess you should have used 'is' in place of 'can be'.
in fact the threshold for securing it is much lower than for Windows and much easier than, for the results, than many BigSystems - but that's way off topic for this list.
Agreeing.
In an earlier posting I gave the example of how I secure /tmp by mounting it so that various malware won't work. I mount /tmp with the "noexec" and "nosetuid" flags. So if I get sent a PDF which, when I open it, tries creating an executable, it won't be able to execute. Its a simple setting but the benefit is great. http://www.md3v.com/mount-the-tmp-partition-with-noexec-and-nosuid-options
Really nice to know this. Someone truly told, 'After learning Linux (even a bit), we can know how Windows used to tie the hands'.
Of course no-one claims any single security feature is an absolute, and there may be cases where a specific security feature impedes a specific business need, just as there are fringe cases where a car seat belt is a hindrance rather than a safety feature; but these are fringe situations, not the common-place.
May be this is used for formalities type of processing or a agreement in join-venture type of thing, like the one between Novel and MS (not sure if it is relevant here or not)!
A 'scratch' system from the Salvation Army thrift store, Goodwill or whatever your local thrift store label is (?Oxfam?) may be $10-$25. OK, so its not going to be a bleeding edge system. On the way to work last month I saw my neighbour throwing out a 64-bit system because he was upgrading to a quad-core system. Lots of people do that!
Oh.
Keep your eyes open. This isn't a production system we're talking about, just a scratch system to experiment with.
Yes, I agree with your suggestions.
My local computer stores are selling 500GB drives for about $30, 4G of DDR3 for about $20. (You can find DDR2 for about the same price on eBay).
What this boils down to is that for less than the price of tank of gas for your car you can have a reasonable "scratch" system to experiment with.
And that really gives you a great experiment and learning in fact.
If you don't drive, translate that cost into something else such as evening out at the movies with pop and popcorn.
Even after buying PC, I would continue watching movies, after all entertainment too is a part of life, at least for me!
Economics is about cost and benefit. I keep harping back to this. What return - benefit - are you getting for the expenditure of effort?
I continue to point out that the effort required to experiment with adding partitions, not least under a LVM, is very low, and the benefit of having the additional partitions, both tangible and as a learning experience (such as the opportunity to experiment with, for example, growing and shrinking file systems, creating different file systems in the LVM and seeing how the same sets of files consume space and respond, is now quite easy to do.
The results are great, of course, learning Linux would be great, even though I can be from a different field.
You may be a "Tyro", but I was one once and continue to be with the new technologies that come out. Right now I'm learning about SystemD and execdomains and Csets and Cgroups.
http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/linux_for_beginners_index.html
Don't let the people here who say "he's only a beginner" discourage you from learning and experimenting. If you never venture out you will never experience they joy and wonderment of learning.
I am agreeing but consider a fact that you are from Software field and
you work entire day there (I guess, this is the case) but it is not
for everyone, like me, who is/are not from the software field but
giving computers and especially a trial - in their own free time only,
by sparing from their busy schedule -- and if I were from the same
field, like, Software Development, there could have been no problem or
time issues experimenting all the day with those hard disks and
partitions. Still I am loving Linux a lot -- that's why started the
torrent download of openSUSE 11.4 dvd (64 bit) --- yes it would take
much time (bandwidth issues here) -- but it would be a fun installing
openSUSE -- using GUI installer (the default one).
On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 6:33 PM, zGreenfelder
as a suggestion for the OP
You are welcome
(and maybe he's stopped reading by now);
Not stopped but I read when I am free
given his constraints (can't nuke the machine, can't afford to have it down for all day, worried about losing partitioning, wants to learn, etc, etc),
Can afford but the problem is 'TIME', so have to use one machine right now.
I think it might be a good idea to go with virtualbox* [http://www.virtualbox.org - from Sun (now Oracle) it's free for
<snip>
* - yes, there are other virtual machine implementations that could be used instead of virtualbox, it's just a suggestion.
Your suggestion is valuable, but as if now, I have started the said download (openSUSE 11.4 DVD torrent), so better (I feel, right now) that I should just use the GUI installer, it (openSUSE) would work out of the box (I read in review) and then after seeing it, next time, that too after reading all about virtuality (or when the proper time comes), I would go for it. However and in fact DEFINITELY I would go for its trial, it is a good option (as you say and you have experienced).
I don't know how the license works for the free (is there even a free version anymore?), xen, and probably others.
You have used the paid version (only)? -- THX -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org