"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...
In finding the cure for Vista, I've installed Ubuntu Linux on my laptop.
It is turning out to be a tremendous OS, and it addresses one of my major
complaints of most flavors of Linux - that being whenever you try to
install a program, it takes you back to 1985 computing.

I'm afraid you will find that when you start installng many ham radio apps,
you are still back to 1985. One of the reasons I'm kind of a fan of Fedora
is that a number of ham related apps are part of the distro, and so install
easily like those on Ubuntu. Those apps, tho, aren't your loggers and such,
they are more the design apps that I happen to be interested in.

It doesn't have Ubuntu's eye candy, though, and unfortunately, Fedora is
intended to be the "bleeding edge" distro, so about as soon as you get it
installed it goes out of support. On the other hand, after many attempts,
they have heavy-duty security that is pretty painless. It took them quite a
few releases to get there tho, and the other distros haven't even started
down the path yet.

...

xpyttl wrote:
Fedora is
intended to be the "bleeding edge" distro, so about as soon as you get it
installed it goes out of support. On the other hand, after many attempts,
they have heavy-duty security that is pretty painless. It took them quite a
few releases to get there tho, and the other distros haven't even started
down the path yet.

I disagree: any Linux distro can be made secure, and just because Redhat
has chosen "secure" defaults in Fedora doesn't mean that other distros
can't be set for security.

Security is always a compromise between useability and effectiveness,
and while Ubuntu may have chosen to set less secure defaults to obtain
easier installation (or networking, or... ), the _capability_ to set
them is always there for anyone to use, not only in Ubuntu but in all
the Linux distributions.

--
Bill Horne

(Remove QRM from my address for direct replies.)

"Bill Horne" wrote in message
. ..
xpyttl wrote:

I disagree: any Linux distro can be made secure, and just because Redhat
has chosen "secure" defaults in Fedora doesn't mean that other distros
can't be set for security.

I think you miss the point. Fedora/Red Hat have chosen to use a new
security model called SELinux that is far more secure than the old Linux UID
based model, but a LOT harder to make work without really getting in the
way. Most of the other distros have this model available, but getting it
configured so it isn't a major PITA is a pretty big deal.

The system is a lot more granular than the legacy system, which means, among
other things, that an attacker gaining root privileges still has very
limited access to the system. With the old system, any sort of privilege
escalation and its game over. That granularity means that there are a lot
more things to twiddle, and a lot of thinking about what gets in the way and
what doesn't.

Fedora bit the bullet back in FC3 (seems like ages ago), and finally by FC6
it had reached the point where it could be fully turned on and not be
constantly getting in the way.

The thing about SELinux is that the compromise between useability and
effectiveness isn't quite as stark as it is with the old UID system. You
can have the system configured to be quite restrictive, and never notice
that those restrictions are there. Getting all the policies set that way is
no small project, however.

Of course you could turn it on with Ubuntu, but you would spend months, if
not years, getting it configured so it actually provided protection while
not raising it's ugly head every time you tried to do something. Red Hat
has spent three or four years sorting out all those settings, and the
default settings for Fedora are now pretty good.

...

xpyttl wrote:

It doesn't have Ubuntu's eye candy, though, and unfortunately, Fedora is
intended to be the "bleeding edge" distro, so about as soon as you get it
installed it goes out of support. On the other hand, after many attempts,
they have heavy-duty security that is pretty painless. It took them quite a
few releases to get there tho, and the other distros haven't even started
down the path yet.


Late flash - I found some other Ubuntu repository, and theere are a lot
of Ham Radio Apps there. I've installed a few, and so far so good.