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Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Operating System
Stability Issues since most recent update
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<blockquote data-quote="Raz0rEdge" data-source="post: 1512827" data-attributes="member: 110816"><p>Well let me see if I can convince you otherwise..<img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p><p></p><p>Let's start with the basics of OS' (pardon me if I'm going over stuff you are already familiar with). Looking at Windows' origin from when it was an application that was started from the DOS prompt, there was no concept of a user or anything. As Windows evolved into more of a standalone OS in itself with Windows 95 and so on they added (more like tacked on) the concept of users into the system and that continued for a while. </p><p></p><p>Windows NT (really meant for an entirely different user base) had an entirely different user structure (very much more strict and more like Unix) that had hard delineation between a regular user and and administrator. Altering any part of the system usually required admin privs. However, there was no way to temporarily take admin privs back then, so you basically denoted a particular user (or set of users) to have admin privs and they could do what was needed. Traditionally, people would then have 2 users accounts on a NT-system, one with admin privs and one without, and would login/logout to do the necessary work..</p><p></p><p>Windows 2000/XP largely continued this trend but added subtle ways of doing things as admin and Windows 7 just made it easier to do just that and now Windows tends to popup a ton of windows whenever an application wants to install anything or modify system settings..the reason for this is that once again the user account has admin privs and it's trying to tell you that the system settings are being modified and if you didn't instigate it, then you should see why..</p><p></p><p>Looking at Unix from which we Mac OS and Linux are spawns..the user infrastructure is defined entirely differently. We have the concept of a Root user that can do anything and everything with little limitation and due to that power, you never run as Root user. You always run as a regular user with root privs. However, Unix/Linux/Mac OS does the smart thing of popping up a window to ask you for your password when you need to do any privileged thing (install application, modify system settings, and so on).</p><p></p><p>So at the user level there is protection for you in the Unix-based systems and finally in the latest versions of Windows as well..the onus is still on you as the smart, educated user to ensure that you do the right thing..</p><p></p><p>Now you downloading something and then installing it (with you admin privs) and it being some sort of malware that wreaks havoc on your machine is easy to avoid..just don't download random stuff..</p><p></p><p>However, the more likely situation is getting stuff into your system through your web browser. To that, we return to Windows for a moment. Microsoft create the Active-X technology and integrated it into Internet Explorer with the best of intentions because one of the things that Active-X did was to give access to the actual Windows system (including files/directories) to the browser. This really worked well when they used it on their own windowsupdate.com site to update your Windows installation.</p><p></p><p>Well, to make windowsupdate.com happy, you had to enable Active-X support and that gave any website out there access to your system and boom, a plethora of malware could be installed with you know about it...</p><p></p><p>To avoid this, an entire anti-virus/malware industry was born to deal with it..</p><p></p><p>Now in any non-Windows system, there is no Active-X and the browser is never given that kind of unprecedented access to the underlying OS to do whatever they wanted..</p><p></p><p>On my Windows VM, I don't have any sort of malware scanner running since I keep it for specific uses and visiting a couple of websites only that I know will not cause me problem..</p><p></p><p>But on my Linux machine back in the day and on my iMac now, I don't run any sort of malware or anything and I have had no problems at all with stability or performance issues. </p><p></p><p>A good thing to do is to grab a copy of <a href="http://www.clamxav.com/" target="_blank">ClamXav</a> and run that on files you download as needed to ensure that the file is OK. You do not need to run any sort of active scanner that can take up all the available resources for no real reason..</p><p></p><p>I realize that it's VERY hard to break away from what you've always done and always heard. But educating yourself about how the system works will keep you much safer than blindly putting faith in any sort of anti-virus/malware software..</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Raz0rEdge, post: 1512827, member: 110816"] Well let me see if I can convince you otherwise..:) Let's start with the basics of OS' (pardon me if I'm going over stuff you are already familiar with). Looking at Windows' origin from when it was an application that was started from the DOS prompt, there was no concept of a user or anything. As Windows evolved into more of a standalone OS in itself with Windows 95 and so on they added (more like tacked on) the concept of users into the system and that continued for a while. Windows NT (really meant for an entirely different user base) had an entirely different user structure (very much more strict and more like Unix) that had hard delineation between a regular user and and administrator. Altering any part of the system usually required admin privs. However, there was no way to temporarily take admin privs back then, so you basically denoted a particular user (or set of users) to have admin privs and they could do what was needed. Traditionally, people would then have 2 users accounts on a NT-system, one with admin privs and one without, and would login/logout to do the necessary work.. Windows 2000/XP largely continued this trend but added subtle ways of doing things as admin and Windows 7 just made it easier to do just that and now Windows tends to popup a ton of windows whenever an application wants to install anything or modify system settings..the reason for this is that once again the user account has admin privs and it's trying to tell you that the system settings are being modified and if you didn't instigate it, then you should see why.. Looking at Unix from which we Mac OS and Linux are spawns..the user infrastructure is defined entirely differently. We have the concept of a Root user that can do anything and everything with little limitation and due to that power, you never run as Root user. You always run as a regular user with root privs. However, Unix/Linux/Mac OS does the smart thing of popping up a window to ask you for your password when you need to do any privileged thing (install application, modify system settings, and so on). So at the user level there is protection for you in the Unix-based systems and finally in the latest versions of Windows as well..the onus is still on you as the smart, educated user to ensure that you do the right thing.. Now you downloading something and then installing it (with you admin privs) and it being some sort of malware that wreaks havoc on your machine is easy to avoid..just don't download random stuff.. However, the more likely situation is getting stuff into your system through your web browser. To that, we return to Windows for a moment. Microsoft create the Active-X technology and integrated it into Internet Explorer with the best of intentions because one of the things that Active-X did was to give access to the actual Windows system (including files/directories) to the browser. This really worked well when they used it on their own windowsupdate.com site to update your Windows installation. Well, to make windowsupdate.com happy, you had to enable Active-X support and that gave any website out there access to your system and boom, a plethora of malware could be installed with you know about it... To avoid this, an entire anti-virus/malware industry was born to deal with it.. Now in any non-Windows system, there is no Active-X and the browser is never given that kind of unprecedented access to the underlying OS to do whatever they wanted.. On my Windows VM, I don't have any sort of malware scanner running since I keep it for specific uses and visiting a couple of websites only that I know will not cause me problem.. But on my Linux machine back in the day and on my iMac now, I don't run any sort of malware or anything and I have had no problems at all with stability or performance issues. A good thing to do is to grab a copy of [url=http://www.clamxav.com/]ClamXav[/url] and run that on files you download as needed to ensure that the file is OK. You do not need to run any sort of active scanner that can take up all the available resources for no real reason.. I realize that it's VERY hard to break away from what you've always done and always heard. But educating yourself about how the system works will keep you much safer than blindly putting faith in any sort of anti-virus/malware software.. [/QUOTE]
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Apple Computing Products:
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