Being the only non-office-bound blogger, I ended up as unofficial external access tester for our new blogs. Except I couldn't get in. I could almost hear the whispers at PC World Towers (“But he's using Linux...”) so made doubly sure by re-booting a backup machine into Windows 2000 (it normally runs Gentoo).

Still no go.

To make doubly sure, I bypassed the firewall. I do this in Linux now and then with no ill effects but it's a big mistake under Windows. Almost immediately – we're talking under a minute here – I received an alarming alert...

... and got infected with a Trojan.

Yes, the above is Messenger spam and you can get rid of it by disabling stuff and installing other stuff. And no, I shouldn't have dreamed of starting Windows without a firewall, a photon shield, three-inches of armour plating and an armed and active ICBM in the back yard, but you just don't get this crap in Linux!

It occurred to me that hidden behind corporate firewalls, protected by network professionals and carefully considered security policies, most computer journos tend to forget what it's really like out there in the wild for the ordinary Joe User who just wants a PC that works. Reliably. The poor sods end up with Windows and being bombarded by this kind of garbage...

Forget it. Ditch it. Get a real operating system. Get Linux!