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UK Gov Security Assessment puts Ubuntu in First Place [pdf] (ubuntu.com)
24 points by MarcScott on Jan 27, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 21 comments



God was this put together by some kind of secondary school student on work placement? It 6 pages with close to zero actual content that isn't just copy/pasted from the links they cite.

Awful.


No, it was put together by a chap called Darryl Weaver. He's a smart guy, and you are damn rude.

It's fine to comment on the lack of deep detail, but the way you have conveyed it has just made you sound like an ass.


Yes and Darryl Weaver is a Cloud Sales Engineer at Canonical. [0]

This is the same as Microsoft doing a report for the government saying Windows is the best desktop OS.

In regards to the quality of the document; the tables are horrendously formatted and the note numbers are highlighted as if clickable links (blue underlined) like the links at the bottom of the document but are not actually clickable. Overall the wording in the document is basic and lacks any real information.

[0] http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Darryl/Weaver


Yes, it is entirely the same and I would be most surprised if anyone reading didn't realise this. It is sales material, from Canonical to err, help sell its product..

Was this a massive revelation to you?

Yes, I agree it's a basic document and I don't disagree with your points... Why didn't you say that to start with, instead of being personally rude about the author?

You had to research the author on linkedin, rather than simply looking at the bottom of the PDF where he clearly identifies himself as a Sales Engineer?


> Was this a massive revelation to you?

Yes, how about titling the HN thread "Canoncial creates report for UK Government ranking Ubuntu as most secure"

Then noone would have upvoted it and you'd have had less opportunity to be condescending.


It's a summary of those links, instead of having to visit them all you get an overview of the results with links to the relevant supporting evidence.

It's actually an interesting overview despite me not been an Ubuntu user.


If you want people with power to read your summary, 6 pages is about the maximum you can make it. Note the use of nice simple traffic light colors too.


As a sales document, well… that formatting would make me run away screaming.

  Platfor
  m
  Integrity
  &
  Applicati
  on
  Sandbox
New page, wait for it…

  ing


Where the heck is openBSD ? if its "security" you're trying to assess, why not use the distro that aims to be secure ? Ubuntu aims to be easy .

Edit: I previously said "freeBSD", meant "openBSD"



From what I've read, including the above link, there is some general skepticism about this claim. The code audit that followed the allegations seemed to help iron out even more bugs, making openBSD even more secure.

Further info here: http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/131505/openbsd-chie...

And here: http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=129236621626462&w=2


From the original guidance I don't see the government making any claims about Ubuntu being in "First Place" https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/end-user-devices-s...


Ubuntu and Windows 8 have the same amount of "orange" and "green", but because the latter is grouped with Windows 7 it disappears from the table.


Looks like a rather shallow analysis.


This appears to be a document from a Canonical Sales Engineer summarizing the UK government report.


Curious: Red Hat is missing from the comparison. I wonder why.


Because it does not run on phone. It is survey about mobile operating systems.


Why does it have non-phone OSes on there, and state that it includes OSes for mobiles and laptops?


I'm guessing they only wanted one Linux distro.

As a CentOS fan I hate to say it, but for a "normal" user, I'd go for Ubuntu too.


Android has SEAndroid to fix all those issues.


Guess why they chose 4.2...




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