Comparing Linux distributions : Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu

                                                            Comparing Linux distributions

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu are easily two of the most popular Linux distributions used in the enterprise. Even so, there are some key differences between these two Linux flavors. Features, user experience, licensing and documentation are the key components to evaluate when comparing Linux distributions.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) can support nearly any application server or infrastructure role. In its latest version, Red Hat seems to focus heavily on security and compliance. The company has introduced systemwide cryptographic policies, advanced auditing capabilities and updated protocols. These include Transport Layer Security, IPsec, Domain Name System Security Extensions and Kerberos.

Red Hat has also reduced the complexity of RHEL's latest version. RHEL 8 is designed to provide a consistent user experience by using the same administrative tools, regardless of whether the server is running in the cloud, in a VM or on a bare-metal server

Ubuntu is an all-purpose server and provides services such as authentication, domain name server and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. Ubuntu can also be configured as a web server, a MySQL or PostgreSQL database server, a file server, a chat server or an email server.

Ubuntu also offers next-generation features, including quality-of-service controls for CPU, memory and storage, and install snaps, which allow admins to easily install applications.

Canonical, the company that offers Ubuntu services and management, is the top provider of managed OpenStack. As such, Ubuntu is a good choice for organizations that want to run OpenStack.

Architecture

Red Hat supports RHEL on several different architectures. The company's dominant architecture is x86 but has versions of RHEL for IBM Power systems and for IBM System z. The company also has a development preview of a version of RHEL designed to run on the 64-bit ARMv8-A architecture.

Ubuntu is also available for several setups. While x86 support is a given, Ubuntu is also available for Arm, IBM Power Systems and IBM System z.

Ease of use

When comparing Linux distributions, ease of use is an important consideration. Red Hat seems to have made a significant effort to improve the overall usability in RHEL 8.

In this release, Red Hat introduced a new web-based management console that simplifies various server management and monitoring tasks. RHEL 8 also includes Red Hat Insights, which is designed to detect and help remediate any internal that might occur on a server.

Ubuntu has a reputation for being one of the easiest Linux distributions to learn. Ubuntu is simple to install and features an intuitive GUI interface that's easier to use than the command-line interface.  Ubuntu Linux automatically installs any required device drivers. Ubuntu also offers an extensive community to answer questions.

Licensing

Red Hat sells eight different license types that organizations can directly purchase from the Red Hat website. The least expensive option is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server license, which sells at $349 for a single RHEL instance. The most expensive option is Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server for IBM System z, which sells for $15,000 per instance.

Ubuntu doesn't charge a licensing fee for its Linux distribution, but Canonical does offer a security and patching service called Ubuntu Advantage. This service costs $225 per year for servers, or $75 per year for VMs. A desktop version of the support plan is available for $25 per year.

Documentation

Another significant consideration when comparing Linux distributions is documentation. Red Hat provides online documentation in HTML, ePub and PDF format and has an entire training and certification program for RHEL.

The company offers a free RHEL Technical Overview course as well as fee-based courses. Red Hat offers a seven-day free trial of its training program, which provides access to more than 50 online courses.

Additionally, Red Hat offers two certifications: Red Hat Certified System Administrator and Red Hat Certified Engineer.

Ubuntu maintains official documentation online in both HTML and PDF format. Ubuntu encourages the community to contribute to its documentation. Canonical also maintains a collection of online tutorials for beginner and advanced users.

The Seventh Day: the values of hacker ethic in the new century

The Seventh Day: the values of hacker ethic in the new century

Until now, the "hacker" was considered an Internet thug, responsible for hacking and stealing bank card numbers. The rise of the Net has contributed to this bad reputation, which is certainly truncated and misleading, of the buccaneers of the big web. Philosopher Pekka Himanen sees hackers as model citizens of the information age. He sees them as the real drivers of a profound social transformation. Their ethics, their relationship to work, time or money, are based on passion, pleasure or sharing. This ethic is radically opposed to the Protestant ethic, as defined by Max Weber, of work as a duty, as a value in itself, a morality that still dominates the world today.

Passion is always necessary to move forward and can always be harnessed if the context allows. Creative exploration avoids being locked into a vision. While the work ethic shows us that the form comes after the essence of a project. 

Their network ethic allows them to fight against all types of censorship and to unravel the strings.

Censorship and privacy

Censorship and privacy

Turkey blocked Twitter on Thursday 20 March 2014, after threatening to close down Youtube and Facebook earlier this month. Only problem is, censors, there are always ways to get around you.

Censorship has somehow come of age: there's no point in pulling the plug when all you have to do is target the attack. Turkey is content to cut off access to one of the most used domain names to break the means of immediate communication. Blocking voices, silencing the opposition and, ultimately, isolating.

But if Erdogan has cut off a highway, the back roads still exist. One example among many: IRC, the Internet's first instant communication system. 

Turkish Internet users continue to access Twitter, however, by circumventing the ban through other proxy servers and VPNs, a technique used in other countries where Internet access is controlled by the government.

As a result, despite Erdogan's announcement of the end of Twitter, tweets continue to rain down from Turkey. To follow them, some hashtags like: #TwitterisblockedinTurkey, #DictatorErdoğan, #direntwitter, #OccupyTwitter and others to consult in this Twitter feed.

Tor: the 95% of the iceberg exposed

The best-known software to ensure your anonymity is Tor, a network of virtual tunnels. It is a sort of IP address and identity scrambler. But that's not all: Tor gives you access to everything. Only 5% of web content is indexed and referenced, leaving 95% of the scattered data to be discovered, the Deep Web. A few articles to tell you more on Hitek.com, nouvelobs.com or citazine.com. What these sources have in common is that they insist on being able to access anything illegal with Tor. They forget to mention that the Deep Web gives access to a colossal amount of content of a different nature, most of it useless, and completely legal... And that Tor can allow citizens to bypass censorship and communicate with the outside world without taking risks.

 

https://info.arte.tv/fr/la-censure-comment-la-contourner

https://www.la-croix.com/Culture/Nouvelles-technologies/La-Turquie-bloque-Twitter-2014-03-21-1123761

       The formula of Mitnick and our "private" life

Kevin David Mitnick, 35, is the world's most notorious computer hacker.Since his arrest in February 1995, he has been a "computer vandal", accused of having caused up to 80 million dollars worth of damage through his intrusions into Motorola, Nokia or Sun Microsystems. Since his arrest in February 1995, he has been a "computer vandal", accused of having caused up to 80 million dollars worth of damage through his intrusions into Motorola, Nokia or Sun Microsystems.  Hackers around the world consider Kevin Mitnick a martyr. Mitnick admits to having spent most of his life as a "network hacker". His first brush with the law came at the age of 17 for stealing computer manuals. Seven years later, in 1988, the FBI nabbed him for looting software. "He feels his sentence today is disproportionate," says Thomas. For three years after his release from prison, he will not be allowed to touch a computer or mobile phone. 

The recent attacks on Twitter and Doctolib have highlighted two major issues. The first is data management. Too many employees of the firm had access to users' accounts. This problem is the same for ALL online services: clouds or shared servers, medical data (cf. Doctolib), dating sites, Facebook...

For example, with server hosts or SaaS application providers, it is obviously necessary to prevent one user from accessing the data of another. And yet, it still happens regularly that by changing a login a user accesses data that is not his own. Beyond that, can the host or service administrators access our data or metadata? The answer is almost always yes. If the data is sometimes encrypted, who manages and holds the keys? 

Between the service providers themselves on the one hand, and third-party vulnerabilities on the other, attackers have many technical options to access our data. However, solutions exist to protect data: end-to-end encryption, popularised by messaging applications when data is stored or transmitted, or obfuscation, which consists of hiding data when it is manipulated.

But technical attacks are not the only threat.The second issue illustrated by the Twitter attack is that at least one of the employees with excessive access was deceived by the attacker. This type of attack is called "social engineering". The objective is to get a person to perform an action by playing with their brain. These attacks were popularised in computer science by Kevin Mitnick, who was hounded by the FBI for years, phoning people to gain illegitimate access to networks from the early 1980s. Today, "presidential frauds" are based on the same schemes: learn as much as possible about the targets (organisation, who is there? when? interests? etc.) to create trust, put the targets in a stressful situation in order to get them to reveal a secret or carry out an action, in complete serenity.