Submitted by rich_c on March 22, 2009 - 6:15am
There's been a fair amount said over the past few days of the potential impending chaos to be caused by the Conficker worm. Apparently, it's scheduled to do something on 1st April. With estimates of up to 15 million Windows PCs infected this could be interesting. On the other hand, it could turn out to be quite a dull non event which wouldn't surprise me. Anyway, this would seem to be a good opportunity to remind Windows users of a few things.
Firstly, please ensure you pay attention to the security of your system. It is not as secure by design as it should be. You need to ensure that any available updates are applied and that you have got an anti virus application running. A software firewall is also to be recommended apparently, even if you are behind a NAT router. I saw an amusing analogy recently comparing securing a Windows box to putting fire extinguishers in a house made of straw.
Secondly don't forget that if the worst does happen, you can recover data and try to repair your system using something like www.sysresccd.org. Apart from this specialised distribution, any of the Live CD distributions can be used to at least recover data as well as provide an insight into what you're missing...
Which brings me on to point 3. You could join the ranks of non MS users, watching with interest as the Conficker saga unfolds without having to worry about fireproofing your straw house. Here's a short list of Linux distros I'd personally recommend you try, either from experience of them or by reputation.
SimplyMEPIS - Goes without saying!
antiX - As above, for older systems or if you specifically want a lightweight, blazingly fast system
Sidux - Also Debian based, really cutting edge.
Mint - Ubuntu based, aims for out-of-the-box useability.
PCLinux OS - Similar to all the above in terms of ease of use but not Debian/Ubuntu based.
Fedora - Well, I had to put more than just the one non Debian based distro in the list! This one comes with a pretty impressive pedigree...
Have a look at www.distrowatch.org for a pretty comprehensive list of available distributions. You may notice I haven't just chosen to mention the top few distros from the page hit ranking. In my opinion, just because something appears to be popular doesn't mean it's the absolute best! (Not knocking Ubuntu here, I've tried it a couple of times and it's pretty good!)
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