Should I switch to BLAG 90K?

hansencomputers · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 5:55 pm Post subject: Should I switch to BLAG 90K?

HI Guys,
I've been quite happy with BLAG 70K. I am ready to do a fresh install of 90K, but I have to say it seems there is a lot of negative feelings about it.

My questions:

What are the pros and cons of switching or hanging on to 70K?
Is 70K inferior?

Thanks,
Mike

jebba · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 6:59 pm Post subject: Re: Should I switch to BLAG 90K?

extraspecialbitter · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 7:18 pm Post subject:

BLAG 90001 ironed out some of the initial wrinkles in 90K. If you can get past the loss of apt in favor of yum, you'll probably find it a bit speedier than 70K.

Junichirô · Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2008 7:45 pm Post subject:

I knew nothing about BLAG last week; I knew no more about Fedora. I installed BLAG 90001 i386 on my desktop and BLAG x86-64 with netinstall (More difficult) on my laptop (WiFi with b43-cutter) and...
All that run fine.
I try BLAG because my two computers have Broadcom ethernet cards and it doesn't work with gNewSense. But I read some thing on this forum and saw it should work. And it's OK!

berkbw · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:33 am Post subject: 90K?

When I went to 90k, my intel 865 would no longer run right, with or without my nvidia board. I had lost the 70k disk, and re-downloaded it. After doing BLAG updates, it was the same experience as with 90k.

Jeff may have fixed that by now, but at the time, ALL 3 of my cumpurtrs were munching dirt.

The problem cause was the trend towards completely free software.
b-

jebba · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 1:08 am Post subject: Re: 90K?

noldrin · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 2:55 am Post subject:

With 90K you'll need to spend a bit more time adding in apps. 70K was near perfect out of the box. You should find things in 90K a bit speedier. My hope is with a future release that we see along side the CD release, a 1 Gig DVD edition of BLAG that gives a more traditional BLAG setup.

hansencomputers · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 3:04 am Post subject:

As far as I'm concerned, don't hold back on making a DVD version if it makes things better. I don't mind downloading the ISO image, and DVD drives are almost universal.

Mike

Saint of Killers · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 6:29 am Post subject:

I'm a fan of 70k. Was good, solid, and easy to use. Gonna take me a while to get 90k down over dialup. Will see once I get there. Undecided.

extraspecialbitter · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 1:27 pm Post subject:

70K was indeed a solid version, but as Jeff points out, one runs the risk of missing out on key security updates from upstream. I'm not sure when Fedora plans to cease applying updates to F7, but once they do, downstream consumers (like BLAG) become vulnerable.

jebba · Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 1:32 pm Post subject:

hansencomputers · Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 12:08 am Post subject:

Just how vulnerable is a home user? I thought Linux was, in general, safer than MS Windows. Does it take constant vigilance? Am I more or less vulnerable than say a Win XP machine? I only want to compare relative security. I was hoping Linux was in general safer.

This is an area I am always concerned with, but feel I'm not understanding the whole picture. I know I've brought it up before, yet I still fell I'm missing something (like I don't quite see the big picture where security is concerned, Linux vs Windoze).

Not intending to expand on the original subject, sorry.

I do intend to update my machine, maybe in a few days, and will use 90K. I just have this nagging feeling that I need to be better informed in this who security area. Mind you, this would need to be in simple enough terms, since I'm not a Linux expert.

OK, thanks for all the great feedback. As always, I appreciate the speed and quality. I'm still learning :)

Mike

noldrin · Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 1:33 am Post subject:

Security is a hard thing, it's all about risk assessment. If you have a good firewall on your home network, and only ran singed packages, I wouldn't really care about what I ran.

Then I'd be most worried about making sure my web browser was up to date. It's one of the reasons I like Seamonkey, easier to get the latest in security without having to add a bunch of new features in.

Pound for pound, if I was going to put a system naked on the internet, I'd rather put BLAG 30K than Vista or XP fully patched. Although I'd probably harden the Linux box anyways.

berkbw · Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 3:11 am Post subject: how vulnerable is a home user?

Well, if you, like I, are on 24/7 wideband, your risks ARE significant. There are bots cruising the net for us....24/7. If you ignore security, you always have backups, right?? and no passwords stored, right??

This is actually NOT a joking matter. Of you are a dialup kinda guy, riisk

is lower.
b-

john maclean · Posted: Tue Sep 16, 2008 9:13 pm Post subject:

I ran a few virtual machines at home for a few months and took the firewall off them. ssh access with keys only. There was a period where caps were trying to crack the virt boxes at a rate of six attempts a second.