On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:50:39 +0000 (UTC), Aaron Sloman
<A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk> wrote:
>So many people have had problems installing poplog because their linux
>installations are "incomplete" that I've finally produced a shell script
>to check things out and, if possible, create symbolic links to fix
>problems.
>
>At least one Suse9.1 user and possibly others have managed to install
>linux with no C compiler, which makes linking impossible.
>
>It seems that linux vendors are now trying to package linux to be as
>much like windows as possible and most windows users do not compile
>or link anything???
It's in part, I think, a security thing. If you are running a
secure server, then naturally you spend every waking minute
thinking about securty vulnerabilities and installing patches
the very second they are released.
If, OTOH, you have a life, you may not *always* install updates
and fixes instantly. If a hacker *does* get in, through, say, a
buffer overflow exploit in one of your "visible" services (and a
firewall is not going to save you) then they can do far less
damage, or it is harder, if they are unable to compile source
code.
It's a general principle for security: don't run or install anything
which isn't needed - it's another security risk. Most people
running servers/doing wordprocessing etc. don't need to compile
code.
On the OpenPoplog "todo" list is a task to make standard binary
packages for the common distros, so that recompilation is not
necessary.
Jonathan
--
Use jlc1 at address, not spam.
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