One of the most popular desktop
"operating systems" is extremely
insecure and prone to stability problems. Each new version seems to
require more and more resources to run even as well as the previous
version. Nobody uses it because it's a
good operating system; they use it because it comes preinstalled on
their computer
and they don't have any experience with anything else. It's not
an
open source
system, so nobody except the company who manufactures it really knows
how it
works and even that doesn't seem certain. What's worse, they wrote
their own proprietary crypto system so
any product which uses it (Outlook's implementation of
S/MIME, for
example) has not benefited from public review and we have no reason to
trust it; lack of disclosure is a real deal-killer in any
serious cryptosystem. It seems like every day a new
vulnerability is being
reported. If you're tired of viruses, browser highjacking,
spyware, blue screens of
death, poor
performance, applications that can't be uninstalled, and a frustrating
user experience, consider
an open source UNIX-like
operating system.
UNIX is one of the most mature operating systems for small and
midrange
systems. It's been proven in scientific and academic settings since the
1970s and over the last 10 years has become the operating system of
choice for commercial webservers and security-conscious system
administrators. Over the last few years several implementations
have become outstanding
choices for use in SOHO environments. Once you experience the
performance, usability, and stability of a
UNIX-like operating system on your PC you will wonder how you ever put
up with that Brand-M "operating system." There
are some applications
where Windows is still a good choice, such as dedicated gaming rigs and
situations where some mission-critical application just isn't available
on another OS. For
almost every other purpose, and especially for superior security,
performance, and stability, look
to
Slackware Linux or one of the
BSD family of UNIX-like operating systems.
Privacy Systems, Ltd. can install and
customize a UNIX-like operating system that includes all of the tools
you need for secure
email, secure instant messenging, encrypted files and
including applications like movie players, music players, and MS
Office®-compatible
spreadsheet, document, and presentation applications from
OpenOffice.org.
FreeBSD is an outstanding open
source operating
system with a security team that has earned a reputation for disclosing
(and addressing) security vulnerabilities promptly. It has a large
repository of thousands of
popular applications which can be custom built on your system. In some
cases, we may also recommend the
OpenBSD
or
NetBSD operating systems which
have similar features to FreeBSD while each having a unique focus and
target audience.
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