[GLLUG] WinVista security better than Linux?

[Thomas Hruska]

Richard Houser wrote:
> Thomas Hruska wrote:
>> In addition to comparing Vista to XP, Jones compared Vista to 
>> open-source operating systems. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the most 
>> downloaded GNU/Linux distribution, saw 129 publicly disclosed bugs 
>> during its first six months of availability. Forty of them were ranked 
>> "high" severity. Red Hat fixed a total of 281 vulnerabilities in Red 
>> Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Workstation in the first six months, 86 of 
>> which were rated "high" severity. On the basis of these numbers, Jones 
>> concluded that Vista was more secure than its open-source counterpart.
> 
> Anyone here know someone that runs RHEL 4 as a workstation?  It would be 
> about my last choice in a workstation distro (not that high on my list 
> as a server either, but for different reasons).  Considering past 
> studies, I almost surprised it wasn't a comparison against RedHat Linux 
> 5.2.

Microsoft probably did a comparison to RHEL 4 because it was released 
roughly around the same time Vista was.  They wanted to show that in 
timeframe x (6 months) between products y and z, the number of 
vulnerabilities (v) in product y were less than z.  5.2 is much more 
recent and would have ruined the timeframe comparison they were going for.

Microsoft is a HUGE company - the left hand doesn't always know what the 
right hand is doing.  So getting up-to-date statistics in a timely 
manner may not necessarily be possible.  Elephants (generally speaking) 
move slowly but they'll obliterate anything that gets underfoot.

-- 
Thomas Hruska
CubicleSoft President
Ph: 517-803-4197

*NEW* VerifyMyPC 2.5
Change tracking and management tool.
Reduce tech. support times from 2 hours to 5 minutes.

http://www.CubicleSoft.com/VerifyMyPC/