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June 07, 2006
Fear Makes Switch to Linux from Windows
I kind of thought this was funny. A website on the internets was talking about Microsoft's Get the Facts campaign about reasons why someone should switch from Linux to Windows Server system. They have a bunch of Case Studies that attempt to show how companies have made successful switches from Linux to a Windows Server solution. Granted, I have little experience with Windows server, but one of their case studies "caught" my eye. One of the biggest issues arose when Envirotactics fell prey to the Blaster virus. The firm was susceptible because its Linux system had no critical updating mechanism or centralized virus protection. The virus shut down the company's system for a full workday. "Downtime costs us between $5,000 and $10,000 a day, not to mention the frustration it causes," says Chris Neuffer, President of Envirotactics. "That's a lot of revenue for a small business." Why is this amusing? The Blaster worm (W32.Blaster.A) is a Windows worm that only infects/targets Windows systems. It takes advantage of a security exploit in Windows. It can only infect systems running Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Systems running an alternative like Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X cannot be infected. I say infected instead of affected because this worm did affect these Operating Systems. The sheer amount of infected Windows machines caused a drain on the internet as infected systems went out searching for new victims. In this way, it is very similar to the Code Red worm before it as machines, firewalls, and routers would get the request, process it, and reject it (or crash in the case of Code Red). So why is Microsoft saying that a company switched from Linux to Windows because they were hit by a worm that only infected Windows systems? Someone suggested it was Microsoft trying to state that because Linux has no antiviral solutions and cannot do Patch Management for Windows client. The case study site fails to note that if the clients had not been using Windows, the Blaster worm would not affected this company nearly as badly as it had. In this way, it is very similar to the fake switcher story that Microsoft has posted before. In fact, this current Linux case study may be fake as well. Many people have accused the "Get the Facts" campaign as being FUD. Whether this accusation is true or not is not for me to say.   Posted by rosyna at June 07, 2006 10:16 AMTrackback Pings: TrackBack URL for this entry: Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Fear Makes Switch to Linux from Windows: The irony.. from macdiggs.com Tracked on June 7, 2006 6:52 PM Related:
Comments
I can't but can believe this type of "junk" from MS. They're so desparate to lie about their own OS it's appalling. I for a fact that MS purposefully puts "holes" in their OS so that they themselves can play "god" with those "holes." I can't stand MS and 2 thumbs up for Linux!!!!!! And Mac OS of course. Posted by: Allen Saucier on June 8, 2006 5:32 PMI may get flamed for this, but I think what the article is saying is that their company fell prey to the blaster virus (meaning their Windows PCs) because the server didn't have Microsoft's automatic patch server to distribute updates to their Windows desktops. They aren't saying that the Linux server was vulnerable, although it is certainly easy to assume that. It's still a big FUD article. If Microsoft didn't write such poor software, the Windows PCs wouldn't be vulnerable to these viruses in the first place. You can hardly blame that on Linux, although they do a good job of it anyway. Posted by: C.S. Hander on June 13, 2006 9:06 AMI switched to windows back from Slackware Linux (excellent distro!) when I figured I have to recompile my kernel to get my Logitech USB Mouse working. I know,I know there are ways around it but it was the "last drop" for me. I was seriously bugged by Linux community too. You know, "where is the patch?" people. So called fans. As I figured the sad fact that only Windows will run my x86 with all capabilities (games! multimedia etc) I went to Apple site. Until that time I had no virus infection, no spyware and no trojans as people claim. We all know it is possible in fact. I thought "well, there is OS X, commercially supported, everything Adobe and AVID produces runs" and moved to OS X, a huge reason was the RISC processor and propetioary (read: well designed,not generic) arch too. I mean, those Windows switchers aren't only "stupid" people. They have very valid reasons. The thing is, what will they switch to when they get fed up with Windows? OS X Ubuntu Linux does have a very windows-like update mechanism. I recently switched my server from Debian to Ubuntu 6.0.6 and the first thing it did after I installed was notify me that updates are available and downloaded them exactly the way Windows XP does. Posted by: Mike Cohen on July 17, 2006 9:57 PMI downloaded the patch and it was a virus (FEAR). Yes i do have Windows XP ,but does anyone know a good patch? Keep comments on topic. If a comment is unrelated to this post, it may be removed or moderated. |