posted by irbis on Tue 18th Mar 2008 21:50
Conversations There are many interesting new alternative operating systems: Syllable, Haiku etc. They may promise speed, low system requirements and many good and promising features. However, I've been hoping that also the security of these new operating systems would be discussed more.

On the age of Internet can we even imagine a desktop operating system without also a connection to the Internet? With networking comes the need for security.

Although there may be no problem now and although developers may see many more urgent goals, the potential threats of future should be considered too. I think the history of old MS Windows versions at least up to Windows ME shows that network security cannot be easily added into the OS as an afterthought but it should be thought about and build into the OS right from the start.
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RE[2]: Unknown
by StephenBeDoper on Sun 23rd Mar 2008 18:22 UTC
StephenBeDoper
Member since:
2005-07-06

The example of OpenBSD is not really applicable to general-purpose operating systems - security is OpenBSD's primary "raison d'etre." They can focus on security and everything else be damn'd - the developers of the alt/niche OSes that you mentioned don't usually have that luxury.

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