Re: Viruses

[Rasaki Bidemi Bolanle Temidire <bidemi CR505412-A ktchnr1 on wave home com>]

Hi Everyone,

You know, Linux has made great strides in the recent years to reach
more and more people and let them know that they do have an
alternative to the usual garbage they pay too much money for at their
local Microsoft retailor.  I think that one of the reasons this has come
about is that people, non-technical people, are starting to feel
welcomed in the discussions that concern the future of Linux and the
software projects associated with it.

If it weren't for a classmate of mine tuning me into the whole Linux
thing, I would have been stuck paying a lot of hard earned money for bad
software.  He took his time to explain things to me and did not make
feel "stupid".  I quickly learned the ropes and here I am at kernel
2.2.10 after starting with kernel 0.9x.x.

GNOME is trying to bring some more of those people, like myself, in from
the cold.  Your attitude is not going to help matters!  Berating people
in a public forum is not a good way to make them feel welcomed in the
discussion.  Not all points are valid but they do deserve to be heard. 
People, technically inclined or not, do deserve the common decency and
respect of having their opinions heard and acknowledged when they make
the effort to come forth with them.  This is how things like GNOME are
made better release after release.

Please don't make comments like this again.  I want Linux and GNOME and
all other free software movement projects to thrive.  I want more
people to tune into the alternatives to Microsoft.  Good discussion is
the first step towards these goals.

Bidemi Temidire

On  6 Jul, jasta wrote:
> You are stupid.  There can't exactly be too damn many "viruses" (most are
> called exploits anyway because UNIX people don't wanna destroy files they wanna
> own them) because nobody is stupid enough to run anything as root.
> 
> On Tue, 06 Jul 1999, lauris@ariman.ee wrote:
>> This topic is more general, but as GNOME seems to be concerned
>> about ease of use it should adress it somehow.
>> 
>> As soon, as Linux (BSD etc.) will become mainstream we are
>> probably facing a load of viruses (trojans, worms etc.).
>> These will start to proliferate the same way they do in WinMac
>> world for the simple reason that all installing in unix have
>> to be done as superuser.
>> Until now most Linux users have been a kind of hackers, who
>> know, what they do. But things start to change... And the
>> average users are always willing to download strange binary
>> programs from the dark corners of net.
>> 
>> Does anybody have a good solution? Or am I a bit paranoic?
>> 
>> I have currently following ideas:
>> 1. Force the use of signed packages (seems a bit oppressive)
>> 2. All installers should default to executing scripts/programs
>>    from installable package only if these are signed and trusted.
>>    The same requirement stands for installing suid root binaries.
>> 
>> Lauris Kaplinski
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
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> 
> 

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