New Virus

[Pennywise]

I just recieved this e-mail from a couple of freinds and work mates, dunno if it's for real or not but thought I'd past it on anyway. Maybe anyone with computer wizzness can confirm?

HUGE VIRUS COMING! PLEASE READ & FORWARD !

Hi All,

I checked with Norton Anti - Virus, and they are gearing up for this virus!
I checked Snopes, and it is for real. Get this E - mail message sent around to your contacts ASAP.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS WARNING AMONG FRIENDS, FAMILY AND CONTACTS!

You should be alert during the next few days. Do not open any message with an attachment entitled 'POSTCARD FROM HALLMARK,'regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus which opens A POSTCARD IMAGE, which 'burns' the whole hard disc C of your computer.

This virus will be received from someone who has your e - mail address in his/her contact list. This is the reason why you need to send this e - mail to all your contacts. It is better to receive this message 25 times than to receive the virus and open it.

If you receive a mail called' POSTCARD,' even though sent to you by a friend, do not open it! Shut down your computer immediately. This is the worst virus announced by CNN.

It has been classified by Microsoft as the most destructive virus ever. This virus was discovered by McAfee yesterday, and there is no repair yet for this kind of virus. This virus simply destroys the Zero Sector of the Hard Disc, where the vital information is kept.

COPY THIS E - MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS.
REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US
Regards,

 

[WarmBeer]

I just recieved this e-mail from a couple of freinds and work mates, dunno if it's for real or not but thought I'd past it on anyway. Maybe anyone with computer wizzness can confirm?

Wizzing away...

This one is a mix of truth and fiction, here's a link to additional information -> Always check Snopes

The virus itself was real, and reasonably large, but would not "burn your whole hard disc" (whatever that means), neither was it confirmed by CNN as "Worst. Virus. Ever."

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Wont affect my Linux box... :icon_chickcheers:

No anti-virus stuff here... :icon_cheers:

 

[WarmBeer]

Ahhh, Ducati, as soon as I saw your name in the list, I knew what your post would be...

If you're having probs on your Linux box, try the following:

[codebox]sudo aptitude remove virus[/codebox]

Just joking man, I'm a convert too

 

[Bribie G]

So with Linux,

Years and years ago I was considering getting Linux - Red Hat flavour - as it could be run on a 486 quite comfortably. Then when I was ready to make the move I was told "oh no, that was in the old days, you need at least a Pentium II - Linux has come of age..."

So I didn't bother and assumed that Linux would die a death as it hadn't lived up to its original expectation that "By the year 2000 sixty percent of all businesses on the planet will be running Linux" etc. A bit like no child will live in poverty and it will be the cashless and paperless society, you know the sort of thing I mean.

However with my current old lappy suffering terminal code rot I need to reinstall XP and wonder what the modern system requirements are for Linux? Quite clearly Linux hasn't died a death just yet. It's a four year old machine, not twin core or anything, half a gig of RAM etc.

And do you still have to have a double Masters in Electrical Engineering and I.T. to install it yourself?

 

[Adamt]

I installed Ubuntu (Hardy) on my laptop with admittedly very little knowledge. Most of my hardware functioned without much effort on my part, though I still haven't got my sound card working - there is a way I'm sure but I haven't been bothered to trawl some forums to find the answer. Synaptic package manager makes handling applications simple.

It appears the system requirements are pretty darn low: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Hardy#...em_requirements for what I'd presume to be a barebones setup.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and no degree in Elec. Eng.!

 

[WarmBeer]

Bribie,

I'm a self confessed computer geek (No degree in Elec. Engineering, mine was Software Engineering ) and my main computer at home is a 7 year old Pentium 4 with 1 Gb Ram, so a 4 year old laptop should run fine. It runs Ubuntu Linux 24/7, and is speedy enough, although sometimes you wait a little bit if you've got too many windows doing things at the same time, but it never crashes.

In fact, I've found that older hardware tends to run Linux varieties better than brand new hardware, as the community based developers don't get given bleeding edge hardware specifications prior to release, in the same manner than Microsoft's engineers do.

The latest version of Ubuntu, 9.04 (i.e. "9" for the year number, "04" for the month number) , is stable, fully featured, and has not given me any issues with hardware (once I ripped the dodgy second network card out of my PC).

I'm not sure what your broadband speed is like at home, or how long it will take you to download a copy, but you don't really have anything to lose by giving it a go. There is a "trial mode", called Live Cd, where the whole operating system runs off your CD without installing anything over the top of Windows. That way you can check that all your hardware works, and give the user interface a bit of a run through, without committing anything to it.

I've put an article up in the Articles section on getting BeerSmith running under Wine (a Windows "emulation" layer that allows you to run most Windows software in Linux).

So no, you definitely don't need a degree in anything more complex than Pottery or Classical Literature to install Ubuntu nowadays. You will probably wind up needing to do extra research if you want to configure your machine to be a little out of the ordinary, but there is a huuuuuge community available (forums put AHB to shame) and willing to help (not quite as friendly as AHB, though )

And best of all, it's not going to cost you a cent!

 

[mwd]

Good information WarmBeer you got my interest going again.

Last time I dabbled with Linux it was like a 5 year old been given a Space Shuttle launcher and being told now program that in Double Dutch. :icon_offtopic:

Mount this mount that and by the way none of your hardware including mouse will work.

Must give the live CD version a try again. But do you need to keep getting new updates or versions every few months?

BTW I thought there was actually quite a number of linux virusssses although minute compared to Windows based applications.

 

[manticle]

"COPY THIS E - MAIL, AND SEND IT TO YOUR FRIENDS.
REMEMBER: IF YOU SEND IT TO THEM, YOU WILL BENEFIT ALL OF US
Regards,"

This bit makes me pretty dubious.

I love doomsday warnings as much as the next fearmonger but I think I'll leave the brown underpants for another day.

 

[Adamt]

Yeah, that sounds frightfully similar to something like this:

"IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW THESE RULES YOU WILL BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY"

 

[zebba]

Yeah, that sounds frightfully similar to something like this:

"IF YOU DON'T FOLLOW THESE RULES YOU WILL BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager

 

[Gulf]

The first hit on a search for "postcard from hallmark" returns this:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_postcard_virus.htm
So the "virus" is actually the email that you yourself are sending around to your friends...

At any rate the technical content of that message is actually quite laughable. The "zero sector" is probably a reference to the boot sector of the hard disk which if wiped would stop the computer booting from the hard disk, but not lose any of your "vital information" or "burn" the disk and can be repaired relatively easily. Also, who is going to "shut down your computer immediately" they find a suspicious email in their inbox...

In regards to Linux on the desktop, yes I do believe it is ready for the "average user" - being one who just wants to use web, email, download, office software, watch videos etc. It is dead simple to install Ubuntu and be up and running straight away. I recently tried Windows7 and while it is certainly much better/faster than Vista, it still took a good few hours after install (and 300+MB of downloads) just to get motherboard/sound drivers and OpenOffice for basic functionality. I couldn't even be bothered finding drivers for my TV card, which works out of the box in Ubuntu 9.04.
It's kind of funny how things change and Linux now has more software and driver support "out of the box" than Windows.

Of course you will run into problems running Linux, as with any operating system, mostly due to it just being a different way of thinking and doing things - the "Add/Remove" method of installing software for example - but fortunately with (Ubuntu) Linux there are plenty of helpful people and websites out there.

If you don't want to download the install CD, you can order them for free in the mail, or I'm sure if you PM'd a Linux nut here they'd be happy to burn one and put it in the mail for you... Legally too.
In answer to Tropical_Brews question, no you don't need to upgrade every few months, it is simply an option. "If it ain't broke..." kind of thing. Ubuntu gets a refresh every six months which includes new features, application versions, driver support etc, but are by no means necessary. If you install a Long Term Service (LTS) release (currently Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron) you are assured stability of features and security updates etc for at least three years.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Bribie, As said before, just download the Live CD from the Ubuntu site, put it in your lappy and run it. It will give you an idea of your hardware functionality.

NOTE that the Live CD is a bit slower than real life..

512Mb should be enough ( I had ubuntu running on 256Mb Ram, a bit slow but ran fine so 512 should be enough ) 1Gb makes it fly

There is also Xbuntu, which is designed to run on slower spec machines, like a P3 with 128mb RAM.

Your 4yr Old lappy wont know itself with linux...you will never have to worry about service packs, virus stuff,registry hassles etc..

I have yet to kill Ubuntu on my lappy, even after doing some seriously silly stuff like removing the Kernel image h34r: All I did was to re-install it using sudo apt-get install kernel image xxx.xx.xx...and it was fine..

And installing software is a breeze....and its all FREE...and most of it is awsome...

 

[Cube]

Linux now days is easy to install and up there with windoze installers ie: knucklehead proof most of the time. Old hardware might send you loopy with linux like old modems and some plug and pray items. As a whole and as suggested grab a live cd and check it out. Get used to the new names for things and consider a dual boot system. Windoze for games, Linux for everyday use. As a rule windoze cannot read a linux partition but linux can read a windoze partition. So store all your pRon on the linux partition away from pesky eyes. Cd/dvd boot into the linux partition.

 

[jonocarroll]

As a rule windoze cannot read a linux partition but linux can read a windoze partition.

ext2 was fine - install Ext2 IFS for Windows and you're set. It wasn't all that long ago that linux wouldn't write to NTFS.

ext3/4 are a bit more tricky, since they use journaling, and thus you don't really want to write to them from windoze. Reading from NTFS might have been a nice feature though.

Someone needs to tell me why M$ still want to use NTFS! All of their problems of viruses etc would go away if they just used ext3 with decent permissions by default (not this 'administrator account is the default, lower levels can't do anything' crap). I get that older programs wouldn't be compatible, but seriously, are they compatible with 7 anyway?

M$ should release 'Windows Secure' which -- from the get-go -- doesn't support older applications, and uses ext3(4) filesystem. Then again, if we're playing 'M$ should'... M$ should hire all the Ubuntu developers, then build a decent product which they can sell, rather than force feed.


Oh, and yeah - dead simple to install Ubuntu these days. There's even a windows application you can download that will hold your hand even tighter just in case you're scared (wubi).

 

[leiothrix]

there is nothing really wrong with NTFS as a file system. It is really quite granular in its security and is journaling too. ACLs on everything. Makes it of a PITA sometimes but is very flexible -- and has more attributes controlling what you can/can't do than EXT3 does.

The problem is that on a home PC at least you pretty much have to be running as admin to do anything. Which means that anything can do anything (more or less).

You can set up windows as a standard user - Vista / 7 are both much better at this than XP is. Of course you have to put up with all those 'do you wish to allow xxxx (allow/cancel)' prompts.

And BCompSci here since people are bringing up quals . . .

Rob.

 

[manticle]

and abbs.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Yes ext2fs installed in XP works well, it also does ext3. I have a partitioned drive with XP on 10Gb and linux on 50Gb and freely swap files between the 2. I store most of my data on the linux partion, as it is safer there.

The only reason I still have XP is because there are some apps that I just cant get to run under WINE.. :angry: . Unfortunatly they are written in an MS code base, so I am screwed

Although XP in Linux virtualbox runs really well,

In all, after converting to Linux, I have had less issues with the operation, and have found many things a whole lot easier, and I dont get the bloody anoying pop-ups and other crap associated with M$

Oh...and the base linux setup takes up less HDD space than XP could dream off

 

[seravitae]

heh, changing to linux is not a solution against viruses.

 

[WarmBeer]

heh, changing to linux is not a solution against viruses.

Citation, evidence, and/or proof?