The way I see it, I install the most secure versions of the software that
runs on the machine anyway so the whole "which distro is more secure" point
sort of fades away. The real question is however, if your enterprise wide
solution depends on the default update mechanism to keep your apps secure
which distro's development team is the quickest to the punch. However I'm
useless for that question :\ In the real world unless some script kiddy is
waiting on vulnerabilities to be discovered and is cross checking all your
openly available apps against it daily a few days won't make a huge
difference unless it's like nimda/code red.

terry

-----Original Message-----
From: listbounce (at) securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed] [mailto:listbounce (at) securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed]] On
Behalf Of tjanas (at) austin.rr (dot) com [email concealed]
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 11:45 AM
To: focus-linux (at) securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed]
Subject: Red Hat vs Debian Linux: overall security

I am evaluating the overall security of Red Hat linux vs Debian. I've been
told that Debian has many more vulnerabilities than Red Hat. I've also been
told that Red Hat is quicker to release security patches than Debian is for
the "stable" release. Can someone point me to a good overall assessment of
the two? Using this tool: www.securityfocus.com/bid I see that Debian has
17 pages worth of issues but Red Hat has surprisingly few. Am I
misinterpreting the results from this tool?

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