Just a little note here. In my few weeks of searching for a distro, I tried Ubuntu also. I'm not knocking it as every distro has positives and negatives, though I like this and Debian the best. What I didn't like about Ubuntu is that one signed in as root and then one would have to create another user and remember to use it, though there was probably a way to change the su to user and visa versa. Anyway, thanks for everybody's input on this one. I got a bit of an education from some of the conversations. Also, this is a good friendly list. I appreciate that also. I think I'll be sticking with openSuse. John The Monday 2008-01-21 at 08:47 -0500, John B Pace wrote:
So, it is like it used to be, Carlos?
Huh, I could have missed this out of thread email.
Really no need for antivirus software? Interesting that the windows machines are being protected from themselve. I assume some distros must be weaker than others? Or why would clamav or antivir (Avira GmbH) been created. I'm probably sticking my foot in my mouth or worse my head where the sun doesn't bother shining, but I'm really curious as to clamav and antivir. You don't have to answer this if you don't want, Carlos. I can check it out! Thanks! John
Other people have already said what I could have said and even expanded what I intended to say :-) I'll add something. The problem in Linux is not "virus", but other types of malware, like worms, rootkits, attacks, perhaps trojans... Most of them are fighted by firewalls, proper software maintenance (ie, closing fast the holes as they are discovered), good practices (not installing anything from anywhere, for instance). It is possible that an email contains code, but in Linux mail clients do not execute code without you knowing - and would execute as user, not root, so the damage would be limited. But innocuous files like gif images have been known to trigger holes in some software (now and then a hole of this type is closed by an update). Or a pdf file can contain scripts which are executed by acrobat. Some of this things could be detected by an antivirus scanning email. -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Tuesday 22 January 2008 07:11:52 am John B Pace wrote:
What I didn't like about Ubuntu is that one signed in as root and then one would have to create another user and remember to use it, though there was probably a way to change the su to user and visa versa.
Did you installed Ubuntu? From above description it seems that you have used only Live CD. When installed Ubuntu is forcing use of 'sudo' which is pain of its kind on the computer where untrusted users have no access, so user can open console, run 'su -', give root password and keep that opened for as long as one wants. In the openSUSE KDE GUI, program 'konsole' has different background color for root user, and recently it was added that the prompt for root is marked with red color (this is system wide), besides common '#'. So there is many warnings that you act as root. To add to all of that even more, my normal user has white text on black background, while root has system default black text on light yellow. With all that it is not easy to make mistake and run something as root that should not be run that way, without hassle of running sudo all the time. -- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
John B Pace wrote:
Just a little note here. In my few weeks of searching for a distro, I tried Ubuntu also. I'm not knocking it as every distro has positives and negatives, though I like this and Debian the best. What I didn't like about Ubuntu is that one signed in as root and then one would have to create another user and remember to use it, though there was probably a way to change the su to user and visa versa.
I thought it was the first user could do extra stuff than a regular user could do, including setting the root password. That first user does not have full root priveleges. Any addition users are normal users. So, you might call that first user "admin" or similar. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (3)
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James Knott -
John B Pace -
Rajko M.