[SGVLUG] Penguin vs monopolist systems and safety

[Robert Leyva]

For what it is worth:

I have never been compromise (to my knowledge?) using 'Debian stable' and
rountine scans with clamav on my home workstation.


> I was just asked a very interesting question in the breakroom -- "is it
> safer to use linux without any sort of anti-virus software compared to
> windows running stuff like Norton when doing online banking?"
>
> To be honest, I don't exactly know how to answer that.
>
> He was also a bit concerned about converting an openoffice document to a
> microsoft office format and somehow picking up a "macro" virus in the
> process (i.e., it would be "clean" on a Linux system in OpenOffice, but
> "dirty" once converted, and therefore capable of infecting a windows
> system)
>
> Again, I stumbled a bit trying to figure out HOW to answer that -- my
> mind kept coming back to a line from Star Wars: "The FUD is strong in
> this one..." -- Sure, I know WHAT the answer is (it is essentially
> imposible(*)) but I don't know how to answer it in a way that would make
> sense to him.
>
> Anyone else encounter situations like this?  What was your answer?  What
> would you tell this guy?
>
> Tom
>
> (*) or "highly improbable" -- that would mean that the version of
> Openoffice on a linux system was deliberately injecting viruses when
> converting to/saving as "Microsoft Office" formats -- certainly not
> impossible for this to happen, but given the "peer review" nature of
> open source, you'd have to be damn clever to get it in to the active
> codebase without anyone noticing.  [well, I suppose you could get
> "everyone on-board" on the idea that it /should/ do this, but that is
> only marginally easier -- refer to Dustin's post, to do wo would be
> ethically wrong, and we like to think we're above all that, right? ;) ]
>
>


-- 
"Knowledge is Power" -- Francis Bacon

Robert Leyva
mrflash818 at geophile.net