Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 10:25:08 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@FreeBSD.org> To: Kastaki <kastaki@ganbert.com> Cc: dmp@pantherdragon.org, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Microsoft and Notworking (was: UNIX and Networking) Message-ID: <20011012102508.A46350@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <012401c152b6$72bb7d60$6760ff3e@computer>; from kastaki@ganbert.com on Fri, Oct 12, 2001 at 01:40:09AM %2B0100 References: <003401c15122$c4b63d20$2260ff3e@computer> <000901c1519c$a7845460$0901a8c0@claus> <014201c15260$6bf15280$5560ff3e@computer> <3BC5DC01.3D4D69FA@mindless.com> <012401c152b6$72bb7d60$6760ff3e@computer>
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On Friday, 12 October 2001 at 1:40:09 +0100, Kastaki wrote: >> On a server, the more workload you can take off the CPU the better, >> that way it has more time to handle the management tasks and heavy >> lifting. This kills software modems for any server. Second, because >> FreeBSD is even less of a desktop OS than Linux, people who do use >> FreeBSD as their desktop are definitely hardcore sub-species of geek. >> Thus the users and, more importantly, those who can write the drivers, >> already know better than to go anywhere near a software modem. > > I know this might sound really stupid, but how do you use UNIX in a > networking environment??? Automatically. It's built in to the system, not added as an afterthought. > I mean, take Win2K, you can install a DOMAIN CONTROLLER and you have > all your users log in to a domain, You can also take a nail and nail your foot to the ground. Neither is desirable. > and it makes life much easier as an administrator, I don't think anything about Microsoft makes life easier. > you can set security policies, You *must* set security policies. You can tell how easy that is by the fact that my box is being bombarded with several attempts per second to compromise it via one of many known Microsoft security holes. All these attempts come from Microsoft machines which have themselves been compromised. > you can virtually control their life from 9 till 5 Well, UNIX boxes work round the clock. > ......as long as they LOG INTO THE DC....but if they log in as local > users (if they are allowed), then they will have no access to the > network.... Unless they use a real operating system. > Yes, I agree UNIX is more stable, it can run Web Servers or Mail > servers more efficiently, it can run File and Print Servers and most > of the time it can run Application Servers, such as Oracle on Sun > Servers - but my question is, how do you administer the network as > far as your users as concerned? If your users are using Win2K > Professional desktops and you are running UNIX servers, then they > obviously log into their desktops as local users, and if they want > to use that Oracle DB, they can double click an icon on their > desktop and that starts a shell at the UNIX server, but how can you > control their desktops from your UNIX Box - or do you have to have a > DC somewhere in your networking environment? Bearing in mind that > 80% of security breaches are internal!! OK, you're obviously very new to UNIX, and you're used to Microsoft. There's nothing wrong with that, but don't make the mistake of assuming that Microsoft is the standard to which others aspire. To quote Andrew Tridgell, the author of Samba, talking about SMB (the basis of Microsoft networking): I think SMB will go away eventually, due to one of two reasons. I'd love it to be that nobody uses Windows anymore, but that's unlikely. The other reason would be that Microsoft drops SMB, which is a distinct possibility. It's a massive maintenance hurdle. The protocol is so incredibly convoluted and bloated and badly designed -- there are ten ways of doing everything. You end up with these massive exchanges going on the wire between Windows 95 and NT, just because they are trying to work out exactly which sets of bugs the other guy has so they can figure out how to actually stat a file or find its size or date or something. And we've found from talking to people who work at Microsoft how much of a headache it is to maintain the damned thing and keep it secure. So, they've got to be thinking of dropping it at some stage. The whole article is at http://www.linux-mag.com/2001-07/tridgell_01.html > I guess what I am trying to ask is can Unix live without Microsoft > or Novell as far as authentication is concerned? Very well, as it has been doing for 20 years. I'm not going to answer the technical issues here, since they're significant, and you really need to understand the Internet before you can understand them. Maybe somebody else can come up with some pointers. But if you hang around in a UNIX environment long enough, you'll begin to understand how ridiculous Microsoft looks to most of us. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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