The OS Topic!

[Joe]

Yes, the age old battle. Clearly, I support Linux over everything, but oh well.

Windows
This is the easiest OS to use, IMO, closely followed by MacOS X. However, it is integrated with programs that have security holes and do not work as well as their alternatives (IE vs Firefox, Media Player vs WinAMP). Also, Microsoft seems to be working on adding features (which won't be used by most users) instead of fixing security holes.

Linux/UNIX
This is my personal favorite. Linux/UNIX is the perhaps the hardest OS to use, but for power-users suck as myself, it comes rather easy. Something to install on your family computer and to expect your parents to understand and use? Not really. However, the upsides. First off, its pretty powerful. Windows has a bunch of limitations on it so that users don't screw themselves over (system files can't be deleted, raw sockets cannot be used, etc), whereas in Linux, you can remove/rename files while they're loaded (automatically upgrading programs), along with many other things. Also, Linux/UNIX is used by a very small portion of the general computer users, thus is a tiny target for malicious software development, and even if software was written for it, as long as you're smart and not running as a root administrator, you can do very little to harm your box. I'm not sure about the UNIX/BSD distrobutions, but Linux is totally open. The source code, suggestions, contribution, and even the tech support community. If there is something you don't like about it, you are totally free to change it, and even suggest that your new code be added to the program so that everyone can use it. As for the community, I idle in #ubuntu (my distrobution) on irc.freenode.new and help whenever I get bored.

MacOS Classic
I don't have much experience with this, but from what I've used it for, it was both stable, secure (many more people use Windows than MacOS Classic, making it a smaller target for virii), and easy to use.

MacOS X
As very few people know, MacOS X is basically just another (high priced =/) UNIX distrobution. I have never been able to bring this to a fatal error (except in booting, stupid hard drive). After I was introduced to Linux, I had already switched back to x86, but I'm interested in installing this on cave again and playing around with it. Basically, this is the stability backend of Linux/UNIX rolled together with the easy-to-use frontend of Windows (ease of use wise, not design).

Well, theres what I have to say. Go ahead and add to it.

[MyndFyre]

He's a member... you're not.  Watch your attitude, Joe.

LoRd is many things that Joe is not, but "member" isn't one of them.

Joe: you talked about Microsoft fixing security holes, but that Windows is tweaked back and doesn't allow things such as raw sockets.  Since you brought it up, removing the ability to use raw sockets was a security fix.  Raw sockets can be easily used to exploit networking protocols.  If Windows had not removed support for them, Distributed Denial-of-Service and Distributed Reflection Denial-of-Service attacks would have simply remained infinitely easy for script kiddies such as yourself.  These attacks involve sneaking malicious software onto a computer, usually via a trojan horse technique, and then having those machines send malformed packets to servers at a predefined time (or via an event).  Raw sockets significantly increased the ease by which DRDoS attacks could be performed, as it was the simple building of a single packet, a spoofed SYN packet, that was used to bounce a few connection requests off of a "proxy" computer, causes the SYN/ACK packet to be sent to the target computer.  With millions of potential machines to use which have raw socket support enabled, the potential for devastation was incredible.

[Sidoh]

Sorry about that, I thought Sty posted that, not LoRd.  My mistake.

I was talking to Sty on MSN about this topic and he copied/pasted that post so I kind of assumed... =)

[Joe]

He's a member... you're not.  Watch your attitude, Joe.

LoRd is many things that Joe is not, but "member" isn't one of them.

Joe: you talked about Microsoft fixing security holes, but that Windows is tweaked back and doesn't allow things such as raw sockets. Since you brought it up, removing the ability to use raw sockets was a security fix. Raw sockets can be easily used to exploit networking protocols. If Windows had not removed support for them, Distributed Denial-of-Service and Distributed Reflection Denial-of-Service attacks would have simply remained infinitely easy for script kiddies such as yourself. These attacks involve sneaking malicious software onto a computer, usually via a trojan horse technique, and then having those machines send malformed packets to servers at a predefined time (or via an event). Raw sockets significantly increased the ease by which DRDoS attacks could be performed, as it was the simple building of a single packet, a spoofed SYN packet, that was used to bounce a few connection requests off of a "proxy" computer, causes the SYN/ACK packet to be sent to the target computer. With millions of potential machines to use which have raw socket support enabled, the potential for devastation was incredible.

Hm, well, I suppose you have a point there. However, the majority of members need security fixed incoming, not outgoing.

[Newby]

but Linux is totally open.

Xandros.

[iago]

I do totally disagree with the removal of raw sockets.  That's just sidestepping the problem of getting infected in the first place, and at the same time removing functionality that certain people/tools depend on.  It's made Windows totally useless for network research, and a real pain for anybody maintaining security tools.  Ironically, this leaves people on an all-windows network _more_ vulnerable to attack, because weaknesses that might be found by an audit with certain tools won't be found.  I'm the type of person who would rather know about a problem and workaround/fix it instead of not know about it. 

Here's something about it written by the author of Nmap on the topic of raw sockets:
http://seclists.org/lists/nmap-hackers/2005/Apr-Jun/0000.html

[Sidoh]

iago... I love you.