According to Donnie Barnes :
On Mon, 02 Jan, Pete C. wrote:

[ ... ]

If you want a rock solid, secure and reliable OS you will not find it in
Windoze, MacOS or Linux, you also will not find it for free.

Err, I'd debate that statement. Linux is, IMHO, rock solid, secure, and
reliable. It still isn't the right tool for every computing job, but it
most assuredly is those three things.

Various flavors of linux have various out-of-the-box security.
Some are quite secure, some are rather open.

My own favorite for security and stability is OpenBSD. Among
other things, it runs DNS servers, sendmail, and web servers in "chroot
jails", so if there is another security hole found in these, it severely
limits the damage which can be done.

Granted, the chroot jail for the web server requires a lot of
work-arounds for some common CGI programs.

And -- unlike Windows, anything which is likely to present even a
theoretical vulnerability is turned *off* by default, and you have to
figure out how to turn it on. In the process, you are expected to weigh
the need for that service against the security implications of turning
it on.

As for the mention elsewhere in this thread about security
problems with ftp, telnet, and some other services -- those are turned
off by default (they were not designed for real security, back when the
net was a much kinder and gentler place), and ssh is the preferred
alternative.

I've actually kicked sendmail off of the system, and replaced it
with qmail, which I trust a lot more than I do sendmail. Qmail was
*designed* with security in mind.

Enjoy,
DoN.

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