Post by patrickp on Jan 18, 2008 3:42:54 GMT -5
Definitely is worth trying, westicles - I've been mucking about with Linux for a few years, but it was when pSX Author started releasing Linux WIPs (about a year ago) that I started spending time with it, and realised that I was a lot happier in Linux than the frustrations of Windows.
You can dual boot, too - if you already have Windows installed and install Gutsy, you can set up partitions manually or let Gutsy manage it, and Gutsy will automatically set up dual booting by default. Then you get Grub as your boot loader (seems to have taken over from Lilo for a lot of people) and, on boot, you can select to boot into Windows, Gutsy, Gutsy safe mode or memtest86 (nice touch that). Your options here are very customisable, albeit by editing your menu.lst file - easy to do because explanations are included in the file.
Ubuntu also has a fairly unique security model as well - there isn't a root account, so you don't boot into root for maintenance etc; instead, you use your password to sanction administrative functions. Works extremely well; the idea is that hackers will always go for the root account on a Linux system, and if there isn't one, they have to find the name of a valid account as well as a password for it. I'm not absolutely sure of the validity of this, but in practice, it's extremely easy to administer your system like this, and it's very secure.
One of my peeves with Windows XP is the difficulty of running in a non-administrative account - although user accounts can be converted to power user accounts, these still don't seem to be privileged enough even for normal usage. So everyone winds up running as administrator and you have a fundamentally compromised system...
Microsoft do some strange things - with decisions like this, to have an operating system that always winds up being run as administrator, I sometimes wonder if they're not trying to encourage the growth of malware and hacking.
You can dual boot, too - if you already have Windows installed and install Gutsy, you can set up partitions manually or let Gutsy manage it, and Gutsy will automatically set up dual booting by default. Then you get Grub as your boot loader (seems to have taken over from Lilo for a lot of people) and, on boot, you can select to boot into Windows, Gutsy, Gutsy safe mode or memtest86 (nice touch that). Your options here are very customisable, albeit by editing your menu.lst file - easy to do because explanations are included in the file.
Ubuntu also has a fairly unique security model as well - there isn't a root account, so you don't boot into root for maintenance etc; instead, you use your password to sanction administrative functions. Works extremely well; the idea is that hackers will always go for the root account on a Linux system, and if there isn't one, they have to find the name of a valid account as well as a password for it. I'm not absolutely sure of the validity of this, but in practice, it's extremely easy to administer your system like this, and it's very secure.
One of my peeves with Windows XP is the difficulty of running in a non-administrative account - although user accounts can be converted to power user accounts, these still don't seem to be privileged enough even for normal usage. So everyone winds up running as administrator and you have a fundamentally compromised system...
Microsoft do some strange things - with decisions like this, to have an operating system that always winds up being run as administrator, I sometimes wonder if they're not trying to encourage the growth of malware and hacking.
