Less than 1% of Linux users? Care to back that assertion with solid numbers?
Slackware is still a very popular distribution, and I know a few companies use it for stable infrastructure services (DNS, Proxy/Reverse proxies, Firewalls, etc). It is a very stable and regularly updated distributions.
Slackware has had an online shop for the longest time.
It seems, based on previous posts by Patrick Volkerding, that the people who were in charge of running this shop have been ripping him off for years.
The situation finally came to a head when Pat V broke all contacts with them and asked the community for support. Having a Patreon page is just one more step in this direction.
If you'd like to contribute, Patrick Volkerding PayPal page is: https://www.paypal.com/paypalm...
I use Slackware, and I support Slackware financially, through PayPal and probably through Patreon in the future.
Do you?
Contrary to what you seem to think, a lot of people who use Slackware like it enough to support it. This is a community that values Patrick Volkerding's work.
The oldest, still the best.
Go Slack!
(Seriously, though, it's worth using -- just plain Linux, no frills, does the job)
Second for Audio-Technica.
I'll put on my QuietPoint ATH-ANC9, switch on noise-cancelling and I can barely hear even the loudest engines on a plane.
Pump some music in those headphones and I am in a cocoon of music. I cannot even hear people talking right next to me (which is very annoying to my wife).
Beats is just garbage, as far as noise cancelling is concerned.
I have used OpenBSD on the desktop since 2005.
It was a great OS for my laptop at the time, and it still is. I used OpenBSD exclusively on it, and managed to get everything done without any issue.
My current laptop is a MacBook Air, but the next one will run OpenBSD again.
... why I should invest some $$$ in the shitcoin "du jour"?
I have always said that computer security is a huge mess. As the crypto-currencies gain value, they provide more and more incentives to bad guys to hack your computer to get at your wallet.
Cloud companies so security on a massive scale and all the big guys like Amazon, Microsoft and Google have a track record of keeping their systems up to date and secure. It's no wonder, because they can afford the best security staff and security is a core part of their business.
Well... In that particular case, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are "more" secure because Intel gave them advance warnings and probably some detailed patch and vulnerability information. And Linux got patched really quickly because Google and Amazon have invested massively in that operating system.
The smallest projects, like OpenBSD, were left in the cold to fend off for themselves. Theo and other developpers asked Intel if they could be a part of the embargo. They never received a response.
... Except, of course, that if you are "root" on *any* box, systemd or not, you will be able to delete any logs you'd like, binary of plain text (journald anyone?).
So what was your point again? Ah, yes, displaying your total ignorance. Mission Accomplished!
The best answer I have ever had to this question was:
"If you want to keep something secret, never EVER put it on a computer, ESPECIALLY a computer connected to a network (any kind of network). If you want to keep something secret, put it in writing on a piece of paper, and keep the paper inside a safe".
The older I get, the more I realize the wisdom of these words. Let's face it, a "generalist" operating system will always be exposed and vulnerable to something or other. This being said, there are "secure" operating systems but most of these are either experimental/academic or extremely expensive.
This is the appeal of OpenBSD: these guys offer, by default, a reasonably secure operating system, with many protections and hardenings built-in. And these are real-life hardenings vs real-life exploits and attacks. All the things that OpenBSD does, Linux can do as well, but none of the protections offered by OpenBSD in a standard installation are activated by default on most Linux distributions.
Install OpenBSD, get a hardened, reasonably secure system. Install Linux, get something that requires hours of work to secure. Is OpenBSD perfect? No. Is it more secure "out of the box" than Linux? Yes.
Unfortunately, it's difficult to uncouple the init system from the rest. And, e.g., I dislike logs that aren't text based (or have they finally fixed the bugs in that piece...last I heard it was "won't fix").
It's not that "difficult" to remove systemd: a lot of Linux distributions do that, like Slackware, Devuan, and Gentoo, just to name the biggest three.
And, yes, binary logs suck, and systemd developpers are a bunch of whiny little bitches, with no understanding or appreciation for UNIX philosophy and history (hence, the appeal of the BSDs, where things are closer to what they used to be).
At this stage, honestly, I'd like to have solid numbers on, say, the number of times Debian has been downloaded vs Devuan, for instance, but I suspect the vast majority of today's sysadmins blindly go with whatever Red Hat/CentOS decides, because, hey, it's Red Hat, and no one has ever been fired for buying that crap. Hence the appeal, for a minority, of the BSDs.
Don't forget NetBSD, which is also a very good BSD.
If you are still using Microsoft Windows... I feel sorry for you.
Sorry, just had to post that.
Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life. -- Schulz
