

What If All the World Ran Linux? - Mithrandir
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/214596/what_if_all_the_world_ran_linux.html

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51Cards
5\. Better Software

This is a highly dubious claim. First off the commercial software industry
would just migrate to Linux, just like it does any high volume platform it can
make money off of.

Secondly, and this opinion might not be popular but... I for one have yet to
be convinced that open source software is "better" quality wise by definition.
Yes much of it is as good as commercial products, much of it isn't. I still
feel that a controlled, well selected development team working in a proper
environment that encourages good communication will be more productive than a
loosely tied group effort. The latter often suffers from a lack of clear goals
and direction, sadly. Not that it CAN'T be done, but I'm not yet convinced
it's a given that open source = better quality by default. Either side of the
coin can produce quality, and crap. :)

Just my 2c.

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sudont
Offhand, I’d have to say the amount of bad/good software is similar to what
exists commercially. The difference is that a lot of commercial software is
either enterprise and hidden, or so obscure nobody cares.

“Better” often refers to _better designed,_ however, and a lot of OSS projects
are actively hostile to any one creative vision that would shape the
interface.

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javanix
An interesting article, but I have to disagree with his conclusions about the
effect on malware.

I'd say that mainstream Linux adoption would likely be dominated by 1 or 2
major distros, like Ubuntu. Any potential attack vector could be targeted at
that distro's package management system, for instance, and be assured of
_some_ impact.

In addition, many distros share a common underlying base system (like Debian)
- any child distros of a vulnerable system would also presumably share the
same vulnerabilities.

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pipeline_tux
I also disagree on points 1 and 2 but for different reasons. We're still going
to need antivirus as long as less computer literate people download and run
random executables. Gaining root or administrator privileges isn't necessary
for the common tasks that malware does such as spending spam or getting the
user's usernames/passwords/credit card details.

Also, despite its stronger security model, all it takes is one script that
runs as root to have the wrong permissions set, or to read/execute other
executables which have wrong permissions and you've got root. I'm not sure if
the common packages on standard Linux desktop machines are configured
correctly out of the box (I'd hope that they are), but this is worryingly
common in corporate/enterprise environments. There are also bugs in other
packages (including the kernel) which can be used for privilege escalation
through buffer overflows, etc (although these tend to be patched fairly
quickly)

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chc
This article makes the specious assumption that if all the world ran Linux,
free software would reign. Currently, the dominant Linux culture is a self-
selected group of FLOSS fanatics. If all the world ran Linux, those people
would be just as much a minority of Linux users as Linux users are of the
total PC-using populace.

It isn't as though people lack options for free software on today's popular
operating systems — they just generally choose to use commercial software.

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Splines
The argument that bothers me is "Better Software". Sure, the leading software
platform in the world will definitely have better software, since there'd be
more developers working on it. Feels like begging the question to me.

You might as well replace "Linux" with "Web Apps" and get a similar picture.
I'd argue we're closer to this world than an all-Linux one.

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macco
I am a big Linux and Open-source fan, but the author is lying to himself. His
claims have absolutely no proof.

Espacially point 1 is a joke. How many Linux users habe anti-virus software?

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mrlase
Didn't read the article yet, but I think the world would be full of people who
actually understood computers (or enough about Linux to function with it) and
a much much geekier life. That would be awesome. _reads article_.

