Oh, my Word!!

[lordshipmayhem]

And there's yet another zero-day exploit for Redmond's Superior System.

This time, they're using e-mails with Word attachments (.doc file extension).

Is there a patch for it? As more than one Slashdot wag has put it, yes, here.

Aside from gaming (sandwichboy, I said ASIDE FROM GAMING), why do people insist on sticking to MS's offerings? I've been getting spammed right now at least once a day, each from a different computer, with someone's stock adverts attached to a message carefully disguised as a bunch of nonsense words strung together to almost make some sort of demented sense. They look like they're coming from zombie computers, because one will be plain text including the attempted attachment, the next will be some sort of Rich Text and include the stock advert as an attachment, one today arrived as an HTML document, which Kontact renders in the original code. (To see the mass of code as a webpage and risk infestation of your own computer "Click here if you trust the recipient", which I fscking well do not. DELETE!!) And I'll bet every one of those zombies are running some version or other of Microsoft Windows, and their owners do not even know their computers are p0wned.

Comments

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

I think what stops people is how Linux looks compared to the "old standby" of Windows. Everyone knows how Windows works; Linux is a slightly different beast. And with so many different versions, it's very confusing knowing which one you want to get/use.

What really would confuse me is having to re-learn all the programs I've been using on my day-to-day stuff (aside from Firefox).

I'd love to switch, but I use so many programs that are Windows-only, and yes, like you mentioned, I play games. Not the insane-powerful-video-card-screaming games, but I play games regardless. If Linux can do for me what Windows can (like through WINE and similar programs to the ones I use), it may help ease the switch.

I'm still sticking with Win2000 right now as WinXP still seems to have security holes. When I finally get my new computer, I'm sure as heck not getting Vista as that will be full of problems...

Though maybe when I get my new compy, that might be a good time to switch. Chris and Gary, want to convince me? ^^

[lordshipmayhem.livejournal.com]

My primary objection to running Windows is doing so while connected to this thing called the Internet. Windows is just Not Ready For Networking, and with its spaghetti coding is unlikely to ever be so. Look at Mac OS: the OS versions prior to X had viruses and needed antivirus. The new X is based on *BSD, which is part of the *nix "family" and shares the same security philosophy as Linux. Hasn't been an in-the-wild virus for years. They're not foolproof of course (no network is), but they're light-years ahead of anything put out by Gates and Ballmer.

I note that one great alternative to going Linux full-time is to go "dual-boot", going into Windows (preferably offline) when you want to play games, and into Linux when you want to do serious stuff like surfing the Net or handling e-mail. But see what I say about Win4Lin.

Having said that, let's look at some of the issues:

1) Look-n-feel: there are actually themes for the GUI's that imitate the look and feel of Windows very closely. IceWM has one that looks almost exactly like Windows XP - except for the penguin head Start button. I've even heard of some admins who have replaced the icons on the GUI's with more familiar ones: The blue E opens FireFox instead of IE, the Word icon opens OpenOffice.org Write, etc.

2) Many Windows-only programs have Open Source alternatives, many with similar look-and-feel, and many of those substitutes have Windows versions. For example, when many corporations are making the Big Switch, the first step is often to install OpenOffice.org, mySQL and FireFox in Windows so their users can get familiar with programs they'll be using under Linux. See this article (http://www.times-standard.com/business/ci_3828429).

3) Examples of open-source substitutes for Windows-only programs:
- Evolution is Gnome's e-mail client, which not only shares many of Microsoft Outlook's features (minus the "autoload malware" so-called feature), also looks remarkably like Outlook.
- OpenOffice.org for Microsoft Office. The latest version even runs some Word/Excel macros, although for the life of me I don't know anyone running macros in those two programs anymore. It opens and reads/runs Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents - its compatibility was listed as over 98% on Word and Excel, and somewhere over 99% on PowerPoint. One cute feature: a button that allows you to instantly convert the document you're working on to a PDF.
- Instant messaging: GAIM and Kopete both work with several IM protocals at once - Yahoo IM, ICQ, etc.
- Nvu works as an alternative to FrontPage and other such web creation pages
- In Linux, you have GIMP to substitute for Photoshop, although there is reportedly a bit of a learning curve.
- Additionally: There are FTP transfer programs, more browsers than I can count (I've found about five so far), video and audio players (sound support can be a bit of a PITA, I'll admit, as many audio card makers prefer to keep their drivers proprietary, but you can get them...), and so on.

Games:
- Native Linux games include such classics as Asteroids and Space Duel from the 1970's. I've got 27 arcade games, 11 board games, six card games (and that's understating things because one of the solitare games comes with a huge number of variations), 8 strategy games (FreeCiv is great), and a half-dozen "toys" (including Mr. Potato Head). And that's what came with my distribution of Linux, there are more out there.

4) WINE is improving all the time, but it still needs a fair amount of Linux knowledge to set up and get working properly. You might want to check out Win4Lin. It's proprietary, but it's available for home for about $60. It uses a legal install of Windows "whatever" to run Windows while you're also running Linux.

[shivanesti.livejournal.com]

While I advocate switching to Linux for the home (even though I haven't done so yet) because most of the applications that home users run have viable Linux counterparts, it is *much* much harder to have businesses switch.

For the home:
The biggest issue for many is that nearly all of the PC games are not ported to Linux -- they are Windows only. This can be surmounted by booting into a Windows partition for gaming while using a Linux partition for everything else, but often people will use IM, listen to music, check email and web browse while playing a game. That's the majority of activity that home users do on their computers. If they do these things while gaming then it may not be worthwhile for them to give up that up while gaming and do it only while booted into Linux. If they're lucky they have another non-game computer where they can do these things, but that's unlikely for most. The real answer is for game developers to port their games to Linux at release or shortly thereafter. Gaming often drives computer technology and increased usage of computers. Developers could cause a paradigm shift in the industry if they developed their games for Linux instead of Windows exclusively.

For the business:
Depending on what vertical industry you're working in, Linux and open-source or paid software can be a viable alternative, or it could be nearly impossible. The improbability or impossibility occurs primarily due to business application availability and vendor support. Most business applications are again developed for Windows. I'm talking about Adobe Photoshop, MS Office, Dreamweaver, and Quicken because they each have open-source duplicates. I'm talking about the business applications like payroll, accounting, financial tracking, customer relationship management, document management, etc that all integrate with each other on a Windows platform. All the middleware that links them together. All these things also come with vendor support.

Now don't get me wrong, depending on which vertical market you're in, there are apps that run on Unix which can be easily ported to Linux, but you don't usually see the same level of integration between these apps and various others. This is because these apps are more specialized. I think that might be changing a bit, but slowly.

So it comes down to companies developing their products for Linux across the board. When that happens then businesses will not be shackled to Microsoft's hegemony.

[lordshipmayhem.livejournal.com]

Actually, for the business Linux can actually be more painless than the home user, it depends on the business's size and the software being used.

Firms that are both older and larger are more likely to be using Unix on their server rooms - their support staff are already well on the way to being fully-trained in Linux, and many of their custom applications are easily ported to the Linux environment. Also, they're likely to be using ERP software - Oracle and SAP have a 50/50 split of the bulk of this market, with Oracle pushing hard for their customers to switch to Linux.

Home users and SMB's are going to have more problems, because they need someone to hold their hand during their conversion process. Fortunately with new Live CD distributions like Knoppix and Puppy, you can try it out and learn how it works before committing yourself.

When I converted, Mandriva (Mandrake back then) said, "Oh, you have Windows on your computer, would you like to dual-boot?" Thank YOU, yes. So I ended up with the best of both worlds, Linux for the Internet and Windows for what wasn't available just yet on Linux. Right now, that's tax preparation software.