Free Antivirus Software for Schools

 

Free Antivirus Software for Schools

Introduction.

In today's world, educational centers have great budgetary limitations, especially Public Education, which means that it is not always possible to have the financial resources to be able to acquire the necessary computer equipment, both hardware and software. When carrying out a simple analysis, it is obvious that the outlay that would be necessary to pay for the licenses of the software that is required in these institutions is almost the same that would have to be made to buy the PCs.

For this reason, the National Education System is preparing to make major changes in the use of Computer Science, while it is proposed to change the official work platform of the currently used Microsoft Windows Operating System to GNU / Linux, based on the standards of what it is known as Free Software.

For these reasons, it is necessary to implement policies, strategies that allow raising the level of knowledge of teachers to work with the new Operating System.

Development

GNU / Linux has several advantages that can be used by the Education System, such as the large amount of software available. Regardless of what you need, you can count on finding a development that meets at least the minimum requirements for what you want. In addition, in the particular case of Computer Science, as an object of study GNU / Linux offers the possibility of having the source code.

 

Advantage

§  Low acquisition cost and free use.

The software, as merchandise, is generally not for sale. What the user acquires, through a monetary outlay or without it, is a license regarding the uses that can be given to the programs in question. The software doesn't just cost a license purchase price. It is also difficult to maintain, operate and adjust. It is important for the user to be able to keep these costs under control; otherwise they may be prevented from achieving their goals, due to unplanned expenditures. The user who acquires free software does so without any monetary outlay or at a very low cost and offers a wide range of resources. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can use free software. Free software is an attractive option for most individual users because of the freedoms it guarantees without having to be burdened by price. However, in the case of companies and the Public Administration, the cost of the software is an important and sometimes determining factor in the choice of new computer systems.

§  Technological innovation.

Free software has the main objective of sharing information, working cooperatively. This is primarily the model on which humanity has innovated and advanced. The ideology of the defenders of free software is that knowledge belongs to humanity. Therefore, users have a prominent role in decisively influencing the direction in which programs evolve: voting on the errors that they want to be corrected, proposing new functionality to the program, or contributing themselves to the development of the software (at the end of the In 2004, a list of the most important innovations in software of the year 2004 was published. The free browser Fire Fox is considered the number one innovation and of the ten programs mentioned was also OpenOffice.org.).

§  Lower hardware requirements and durability of solutions.

Although it is impossible to generalize, there are documented cases that show that free software solutions have lower hardware requirements, and therefore are cheaper to implement. For example, Linux systems that act as servers can be used without the graphical interface, with the consequent reduction of necessary hardware requirements. It is also important to note that in proprietary software the author may decide at a given moment not to continue the project for a certain platform, for hardware that he considers old, or to discontinue support for a version of his software.

In free software applications, these decisions cannot be made by a company or individual but by an entire community, with different interests. Which translates into better support overall for older versions of software and minority hardware or software platforms.

These are a group of advantages that we think might be the most important, but there are many others.

 

Disadvantages

§  1. The learning curve is greater.

If we put two ladies who have never touched a computer, it will probably take them as long to learn to use proprietary software, for example from Microsoft, than free software like Gnome or KDE; But if users have used proprietary software before, it usually takes longer to learn how to use free software.

§  2. Free Antivirus Software has no warranty from the author.

§  3. Most of the hardware configuration is not intuitive.

Previous knowledge about the operation of the operating system and fundamentals of the equipment to be connected is required to achieve proper operation. However, the documentation regarding the hardware configuration is so explicit and detailed that it allows the novice user to deepen their knowledge of their hardware in a few hours and once they have that knowledge, the configuration becomes trivial.

§  4. The diversity of distributions, packaging methods, use licenses, tools with the same purpose, etc.

They can create confusion for a number of people. There are those who see this as a strength because they can be found from specialized distributions in embedded systems with many limitations of storage and peripheral devices of specialized use to distributions optimized for use in high-performance servers with several processors and large storage capacity; going through the distributions designed for use in desktop computers and among which are those designed for the neophyte user that are very easy to install and use and those designed for the advanced user with all the necessary tools to exploit free software in its full potential.

These are the disadvantages that most closely strike us. But there are some others that you might be thinking right now that we could also add to the list.

Comparison between Windows and GNU / Linux

There are many terms by which to assess the superiority of one operating system over another. Some are faster for the very model on which they are built, and others only differ in the low price at which they are marketed. Getting a criterion depends all the time on the study with which it is done, and what we need. It is good to review each element separately and define very well, not accommodating any specific one, either for convenience or any other reason.

Criteria for comparing two operating systems, in general, are:

Stability

Although there are in GNU / Linux what are known as unstable versions, it does not mean that this operating system is really unstable, but that the software that is under development are made public so that the improvements that are being introduced by any of the users.

Stability: GNU / Linux has the experience of a quarter of a century from Unix systems. As IBM puts it, “GNU / Linux is stable, functional, and offers great value. Like proprietary Unix systems and mainframes, GNU / Linux is very stable. “The GNU / Linux Open Source model ensures that bugs are detected and corrected quickly.

In Windows, the "alpha" versions are known, which are the first versions of a Windows operating system, and generally have many bugs. The fact that the code is closed prevents the first person to find a bug from being able to fix it, they can only report it. A big difference with any of the GNU / Linux distributions.

The same happens with important applications within the operating system, such as the Internet Explorer browser.

Elimination of processes: Something similar happens when we try to eliminate a process in Windows, many times the system is overloaded and does not allow us to do anything else, when an application has failed. In GNU / Linux there are several ways to kill processes, either by executing commands or in the shell.

Security

In July 2006, one of the international computer security companies detected 200,000 of the virus. And it predicted that in two more years this number would grow to 400,000. That company is McAfee. In 2005 alone, 11,000 viruses were detected for Windows, and only about 450 for GNU / Linux.

One of the difficulties of using Windows lies in its vulnerability to viruses. The way it is made makes it weak and very penetrable. In addition, the fame of the Microsoft company of cheating other companies has made it have many enemies who are dedicated to building viruses for this system. Although there are many antivirus for Windows it is never enough, the installation of these is often complicated, it makes the machine run slower and they are very expensive.

GNU / Linux, on the other hand, over 20 years only a dozen of them are known. Let's see why.

§  Traditionally, the programmers and users of systems based on Unix / BSD have considered security as a priority, so there are greater measures against viruses such as the need for authentication by the user as administrator or root to be able to install any additional program to the system. .

§  These systems are much less popular and used than Windows, which makes them less attractive to a virus or malicious software development.

It is worth noting that there are also antivirus for GNU / Linux, example: Clam AV. For all the reasons explained is that most of the servers in the world use GNU / Linux, even in Microsoft itself. Others use UNIX which is fast and secure.

Cost:

In Free Antivirus Software, it is mostly free. Money can be made by selling discs, or by giving technical support, but the software is generally free. There are many GNU / Linux companies that make software under commercial licenses, in fact the Open Source movement validates this way of doing business. Always in any case it is much cheaper than any proprietary SW.

Let's evaluate what happens on the other side in Windows the home edition costs $ 199. And the Professional edition $ 299. Many of the software that are used daily are very expensive, and are paid regardless of the operating system, is the case of: Photoshop ($ 449), Dreamweaver ($ 999), etc. At the same time each software update can cost a large% of money. For example, if a new Dreamweaver is released, and you want to use it, and you had already paid for the old one, you may need more than $ 200 to purchase the new version.

As an exception, and due to the North American blockade, no Microsoft software is paid, that is, the Windows operating system. That is why it does not cost schools, if this were a different reality it is necessary to pay for each software we use, in terms of cost it is easy to understand the difference with GNU / Linux, if this is used there is no need to pay it.