[olug] Distros

[Jonathan Warren]

> This is kind of important for me.  I'm not a hardcore Linux user.  I like to
> learn the "under the hood" stuff, and will do so, but can't let the large
> learning curve associated with this slow me down when trying to use Linux
> for the day to day stuff I need *NOW*.  A good OS will strive to make things
> easy for the casual user, but expose the full set of features for the power
> users.  A smart user will wear both hats (power user and casual user),
> depending on his specific needs at any given time.

A linux distro isn't an Operating System.  It is a compilation of a lot of differnet software.  Some of that software is an operating system.
I don't know why it is but most distros just enable everything, Slackware included.  This is a dangerous thing to do.  Unfortunatly the casual user will install linux and marvel at how easy it is and have no idea what they just installed.  I can't really speak for all the distros but it is almost always a given that apche will be running on the machine probably as root.  This goes for some other services as well such as telnetd and sendmail or some other mailer.  Anyway my point simply being that unless you trust your vendor enough to beleive they gave you software without security issues you should at least learn about run levels and inetd or xinetd or whatever the services is that starts other services.  That way you can disable things that you don't need and prevent being hacked.  I will concede this is most important for a machine on an always on connection but it is a good practice as well IMHO.

-Jon Warren


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