why not e-mail everyone and tell em about Linux. Sadly I think the ITS won't allow non-Window$ OS to run due to the "security threat". They say you gotta be running anti-virus to connect ... they may have this built into being able to access the internet. Still, it's worth a try I suppose.
No no no. Don't email everyone. That's spam and we don't want to be associated with that.
Sometimes IT people at universities are like frightened children. Sometimes they get so scared of being breached they get fixated on a policy and don't use their brains.
When I worked at a university, I had computers on a subnet that was hacked. They suddenly went from no security to overboard. My computers weren't the problem. The chief admin was a nice guy, but he really had no clue about running computers in a science lab. He told me that I had to replace all the Windows95 operating systems with Windows2000. I flat out told them that I would not do that and could not do that because I had legacy hardware and software that would not run under the NT kernel (which was abosoulely true). He started to argue with me and just interrupted him by saying that that I did not have $100,000 to replace the legacy hardware or several months to rewrite the software, and what he wanted was simply not going to happen, plus he was ignoring the fact that MY COMPUTERS WERE SECURE (the breach was on one of their systems).
He backed down, but three weeks later shut down all my networking claiming my systems had been hacked. He had a problem, instead of doing any detective work at all, he just assumed it was me (of course, by doing so, he left the problem system ONLINE). Again, nice guy, but stopped using his brain. I had to spend two hours holding his hand through his own netoworking logs before he realized that MY COMPUTERS WERE SECURE.
Another time I had to install Linux. I told him that I was going to install a Linux box (needed an IP number, and he had locked the routers out to specific MAC addresses). When he asked what distro, I told him RedHat 8. He sat there and told me that they only allowed SuSe because all other distributions had security holes (obviously he knew squat about Linux, SuSE is great, but not the only secure distro). Again, he was a nice guy, but the response was rather childish. I patiently explained to him firmly that no, that was not true, I knew what I was doing, I had several RH linux boxes exposed directly to the internet without them being hacked, I would firewall the crap out of it with IPCHAINS, and they were free to portscan it and see for themselves. They did that night. I passed. Two months later I got a huge portscan traffic from a random IP address in the building. I send the logifles to them and told them that they had a security breach. They wrote back and said "well that was just us checking your security again. You know, thanks for noticing it."
They never bothered me again.
My advice, put your linux box on the network, and set up a good IPTABLES firewall (you can go to firestarter.sourceforge.net for a wizard-tool if you are not proficient with IPTABLES). They can't tell what your box is if the ports are blocked, unless they are actively sniffing your browser packets for the broswer ID (in which case I'd be alarmed for privacy reasons). Don't set up an active mailserver (most distros have their sendmail or postfix configured not to listen to the internet these days) and use the university mail proxy so they don't see stuff coming from port 25. In fact, leave pretty much all the servers off.
If they call you on it, be courteous, but firm. Understand that these guys are really really insecure because they have to deal with fuckwit windoids all the time like that Jerry Taylor guy from Tuttle Oklahoma. Let them know you are not a fuckwit windoid, and you know what you are doing by speaking their language. That will make them feel better.
