In over a decade of computer use, I had never picked up a single computer virus. Common sense things like not booting off media from unknown sources, not blindly executing programs from untrusted sources, and not opening unexpected email attachments have served me well over this time period.
All this changed when a computer virus unimaginatively named “MS Blaster” hit the Net. Now, for the first time, a Windows 2000/XP system could become infected simply by being connected to the Internet (!). Within hours of the release of the virus/trojan, my computer was infected (along with thousands of others).
The word from Microsoft was that this vulnerability was easily remedied with a software patch that had been available for weeks. The problem was that there was so many people were trying to download this patch, that Microsoft’s servers became slow and unresponsive. Worse than that, the patch would not install unless I updated my Windows 2000 installation to Service Pack 4, a nearly 100MB download on a slow 56k dial-up connection.
After this long and frustrating ordeal, which, in my opinion, should have never happened in the first place, I re-evaluated my operating system choices.
Now, you may be wondering what I mean by “should have never have happened in the first place”. My computer did not come preinstalled with Windows 2000. I actually drove to a physical store and purchased a box which seemed grossly oversized for its contents: a single CD-ROM which had “Microsoft” and “Windows 2000″ written all over it in holographic text.
At that time, the people at Microsoft were fairly certain that most people would be using the software contained on that disc to connect to the Internet. After all, every copy of Windows 2000 included a little program called “Internet Explorer” (which, by the way, could not be removed unless you used unsupported, third-party software). So if they knew people were going to be connecting to the Internet, how could they release a system so insecure that viruses could be easily transmitted to it by a user not doing a single thing except for connecting to the Internet?
Some of you out there will no doubt argue that it is not the fault of Microsoft that there are evil coders out there existing solely for the chance at exploiting coding mistakes made by software vendors. But I counter with this fact: MS Blaster was not an attack made possible by sloppy coding. It was an attack made possible by the inherently insecure default configuration of the Windows 2000/XP software. The way Microsoft seems to put system security in the back seat to adding whiz-bang features that many don’t want or need is, in my opinion, inexcusable.
Up until a couple of weeks ago, Windows 2000 was all the operating system I ever needed. It was rock-solid, ran all the programs I needed, and (if I was careful) I never had to worry about viruses. But this Blaster mess had me immediately searching for alternatives.
This is not the first time I have tried switching from Microsoft Windows to some other operating system.
Several years ago I had tried installing a linux distrubution (I can’t remember which… though I suspect it had to be an early version of Slackware) on my main system, a workhorse of a Gateway 2000 486DX-66. It was a week-long nightmare of downloading some thirty floppy disk images, configuration problems, and the search for incomplete or inaccurate documentation and non-existent drivers for my CD-ROM drive and video card. After that debacle and reinstalling Windows For Workgroups 3.11, I upgraded to Windows 95 and later to Windows 98.
At about that time I heard of a new operating system called BeOS. It was supposed to be as elegant as a Mac but much more powerful. I loved BeOS and its powerful simplicity, but it was eventually abandoned by it’s creators. Software and drivers became too difficult to find for BeOS to make it a viable “everyday OS” for me. That’s when I reluctantly upgraded to Windows 2000.
Now once again, I look towards Linux. Actually what I really want is a Mac G5 and it’s BSD UNIX based Mac OS X operating system, but alas, the current balance of my bank account will not allow me to make such a purchase.
After a bit of research on the various distributions of Linux available, I decided on Mandrake.
All I can say of about a week of using Mandrake 9.1 as my primary operating system, is “good riddance” to Windows. Every computing I need is filled by some Linux program. I can browse the web with Mozilla Firebird, read my email with KMail, burn CDs with K3b, chat with my AIM buddies with Gaim, edit photos with Gimp (although it’s unusual interface takes some getting used to), open and edit Word documents with OpenOffice, connect to Windows computers with LinNeighborhood, print to Windows network printers with CUPS… the list goes on and on. The only thing I find lacking is the department of audio editing and manipulation (anyone know of a Linux equivalent to Cool Edit Pro–now known as Adobe Audition?).
For those out there who keep asking whether Linux is ready for the desktop, my answer is “almost”. The apps are there. The underlying system is there. What needs work is the “user experience”. Many times there are a dozen different ways to do a particular task on a Linux system. Unfortunately, there is hardly ever a consistent “default” way to do the task. Users don’t want variety when it comes to how to launch a program or how to install software or how to configure their hardware, they want consistency. And that is what is missing from Linux. But at any rate, it is still better than Windows.
Posted by Michael Serrano | Permalink | 0 Comments