Liam Proven wrote: > I am aware of a number of worms and a handful - a tiny handful - of > virus-like programs that have been demonstrated under lab conditions. > Out in the wild? I'm not aware of a single instance of a live Linux > virus propagating in the wild. If you are, do please share your > knowledge.
For viruses in the traditional sense, I don't know of one operable on any kernel anyone should be running in the wild. Certainly not new enough to find themselves on an updated Ubuntu PC. Perhaps, pedantically, your statement is correct. There's nothing currently known as a 'virus' or as 'spyware' to which a Ubuntu desktop is likely to be susceptible. But to advertise imperviousness on the grounds that there's nothing yet available, despite the obviousness of the possibility, just reeks of the sort of marketing I dislike some of the larger commercial software vendors for. Especially given Ubuntu (and Linux in general) having such a reliance on community support - the chances of a user inadvertently running some malicious command that really doesn't look that bad is astoundingly high. With no real benefit for whoever's doing the misinformation, that only makes them the same flavour as the early viruses for any other platform. That said, this is something I've come across on Linux server platforms. So common is the conception that Linux is impenetrable that on having Wordpress or similar internet-facing-yet-holey software compromised on a server, I've known customers suggest that this is impossible on Linux. > > I have no idea what "FruitLoops" is. AutoCAD I can believe would be > difficult, but then, the only way to open an AutoCAD file is to have a > copy of AutoCAD, isn't it? IOW, 99.99% of Windows PCs can't open > AutoCAD files anyway. FruitLoops is audio studio software for OSX. It was the first piece of OSX software with its own proprietary format that came to mind. You claimed that "it reads and writes ... anything from any Windows or Mac program." which, in my mind, includes AutoCAD. And, well, any Windows or Mac program. How about Call of Duty save files? The only meaningful thing to open those in is Call of Duty itself, which doesn't run under Linux (including Wine). > I have in the past found ways to view the contents of plain .DXF > files; I would not be surprised if with some ingenuity, this could be > done on Linux. In all honesty, I'd rather we advertise that we have reasonably good file compatibility than assume that such 'ingenuity' is just part of using Linux to open files. > I feel that my statements are entirely reasonable and acceptable > generalisations and I do not agree with your attempted rebuttals. Perhaps they're mostly reasonable, but they're really not things I'd support appearing in any advertising. Irrespective of the possiblity of demonstrating them to be logically true, no 'normal' user is going to believe them having attempted to actually exercise them. Like I say, I'd much rather have bulletproof honesty in the advertising than sail that close to outright lying with 'features'. -- Avi -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
