Antivirus in FC3?

[Craig White]

On Sun, 2005-03-20 at 05:02 -0600, Jeff Vian wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-03-19 at 22:12 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> > On Sat, 2005-03-19 at 22:06 -0600, Brian Fahrlander wrote:
> > 
> > >     Yeah, and I was more than happy to let it die, thinking it either
> > > got the message across, or no one was going to.  But I still maintain
> > > that if you want to stop viruses in your workplace, you don't make
> > > everyone walk around in rubber suits....you kick Microsoft to the curb.
> > ---
> > I know that you don't believe this but I can tell you for sure - that
> > viruses & spyware are of absolutely no consequence on any network of
> > Windows desktop computers that I maintain but that is not achieved
> > without cost or effort. No rubber suits though.
> > 
> > your kick Microsoft to the curb reference pretty much assumes an
> > inability to manage a network of Windows computers with no regard to the
> > users needs.
> > 
> > I am no fan of Microsoft but I am neither a fan of Apple, Adobe, Intuit
> > etc. either.
> > 
> > I think that Linux as a desktop is still a bit short of what you can get
> > on the desktop on other 'proprietary' OS's and as long as businesses are
> > willing to pay for the licenses and there is no mitigating factor for
> > wholesale change to something that is perceptibly less usable to them,
> > they won't go for it.
> > 
> You miss one very important point with this vitriol.  $$$$$$
> 
> I have been M$ free for several years, and I can do almost anything on
> Linux that you can do on Windows at 0 cost.  The office suite -- OS --
> CD burning -- antivirus -- pop-up blocker -- firewall -- graphics editor
> -- web server -- database -- mail server and others all cost a windows
> user _several_ hundreds of dollars.  All are available with most Linux
> distributions for free.  
> 
> For the home user or small business cost is often a major factor in what
> is purchased. The other major deciding factor is perception - both value
> and utility.
> 
> BTW,  I do not think of 'desktop computing' as a business workstation
> but rather as home users.  In the workstation (business) market Linux
> seems to be taking market share from Windows at an increasing pace.
> 
> You also seem to overlook the current state and the rapidly improving
> user friendliness and utility for the Linux distributions that _is_
> starting to make it more acceptable across the board.
> 
> It will be interesting to see where the status balances out.
----
I don't think I'm overlooking the money. Money is not simply about out
of pocket expenses though - there is of course the notion of TCO (total
cost of ownership).

I have used Linux 95% for probably about 5 years now. My own personal
computing needs are relatively simple...email, web browsing, word
processing, spreadsheet comprise 90% of my activity.

I still have music software (Pro Tools) on my Mac

I still do desktop publishing on my Mac (thought I'm playing with
Scribus)

I still have a WinXP system and use it as part of my testing lab.

The improvements in the Linux desktop have been greatly appreciated but
oowriter still isn't quite up to MS Word, oocalc is nowhere near MS
Excel and I have been satisfied with Evolution 2.0.2 since I changed
IMAP servers from uw-imap to cyrus-imapd. Of course Scribus is nowhere
near Quark Express or Adobe In Design, nothing on Linux has a feature
set similar to Dreamweaver, and a free equivalent to Filemaker Pro -
fahgettaboutit. I do use Bluefish even though I own GoLive. The
limitations that you or I are willing to accept in order to use free
software is not necessarily going to be acceptable to a business.

That said, I am currently working with a non-profit company to put Linux
on all of the users desktops but the general consensus is that Linux on
the desktop is 'good enough' which is not the type of conclusion that
will drive many businesses into adoption for their desktops.

I have migrated a number of businesses from WinNT4 Domain Controllers to
RHEL (or clone) - samba/BIND/DHCP/OpenLDAP/Apache/Sendmail (lately more
Postfix)/uw-imap (lately cyrus)/ and I can tell you that the businesses
'short term' cost is higher since it takes me longer to set all this up,
migrate the Windows Domain SAM etc. than it would to install Windows
2003 Server. Licensing and TCO issues make it practical for them to bear
the initially higher conversion costs.

Your comment about being 'MS Free' strikes me as rather anti-Microsoft
motivated. I see Macintosh users that won't give up Microsoft Office
despite their virulent anti-Microsoft charges. I've seen people on this
list like Gene who claims never to have owned a Windows computer - but
uses samba for networking at his house. I have seen people that claim to
be 'Microsoft Free' but save their documents in 'doc' format, 'xls'
format. Install mplayer and view Windows Media Player content via the
w32 codecs. I think that many people have the perception of being MS
Free only because they ignore the reality - that they probably aren't.

Which really gets to the nub of the underlying point that I was trying
to make with Brian. Linux is NOT the Microsoft alternative - it has to
live in a technological world that is dominated by Microsoft. Linux is
Free / Open Source Software which has a decidedly different
design/production/distribution model than that which the computing
industry has commonly employed - closed source/proprietary software.
While there may be some people driven to use Linux because it is not
Microsoft and there may be some people driven to use Linux because they
don't have to open their wallet to acquire it, the core reason for it's
development and growth is because of the open source model itself.

Lastly - since you referred to 'my vitriol' I will point out that you
nitpicked a statement that I made - that when considered in the context
that I made it - was absolutely irrefutable and even when considered out
of the context in which it was made - was arguable only with a
misrepresentation of facts such as you did. Let's see how you react when
someone does something like that to you.

Craig