To the Editor:

These days, the world hardly goes a week without hearing of a

new computer virus. This week has been no different: the “bagel”

and “MyDoom” viruses are dominating Internet traffic. In fact,

according to The Collegian, MyDoom accounted for 10 percent of all

Internet bandwidth last Wednesday.

In fact, in the history of the Internet, about 25 million

computer viruses have been recorded. Of these, 24.99 million have

affected only computers that run Microsoft Windows. About 10,000

have affected computers running Apple’s Macintosh OS or some

derivative thereof. And, most remarkably, there is a popular

operating system that only 18 viruses have ever been

discovered.

I suggest to all students who value their personal information,

like credit card numbers, social security numbers and other private

data to switch to Linux. Linux is absolutely free, and can be

downloaded right off the internet. Go to http://www.redhat.com to

try out Red Hat Linux, or http://www.distrowatch.com to try out any

other flavor of Linux.

Another option is to try Apple’s OS X, which also has a

remarkable virus-free history. Microsoft, with all of its might,

still fails at keeping their software safe enough for the public to

use without fear of identity theft, random crashes and other

inconveniences (like losing that paper you spent hours writing, but

forgot to save before Windows crashed).

Jesse C. Owens

Sophomore, computer science