MJ Ray wrote:

Viruses could exist on Linux, but they would have trouble infecting other users on the same system, assuming most of your programs are installed as root and you log in as another user. That's why people say you should be very cautious about doing anything other than the bare minimum as root.

agreed, it is something to be aware of, installing a virus on a linux box is much more dificult than under windows...

Worms and intrusions are more common. That's why everyone says to keep up to date with patches and security updates. As your machine was professionally installed, I assume they installed all known security updates? With RedHat, I don't know if there's an automated tool with it, but you can keep safe by reading either the "Security" page of LWN, http://lwn.net/ (out every Thursday), or the regular Security newsletter (out most Saturdays) from http://www.linuxsecurity.com/

for Redhat, ther are a fre options for updates.. if you are new to this, and want things to just work smoothly, I suggest looking at the up2date and up2date-gnome programs. These are preconfigured to look at redhat's site and have a nice GUI telling you what is updated, what needs changing, and facilities to make these changes.. For the more advanced users out there, look at Autorpm, it offers much more flexability when trying to keep some control over large numbers of machines, but it requires a little bit of configuration and management to keep it working smoothly..

Aparently SuSE has something similar to up2date, but I don't know too much about it, any SuSE fans care to comment on th autoupdate features of Yast ??

hth Sz

-- MJR

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