On Sat, 20 Jul 2024 22:13:00 +0200 Hans <hans.ullr...@loop.de> wrote:
> > You missed one: Linux is virtually a virus-free environment, and a > > large user base would mean many more people running as root, and it > > would become worth the time of malware writers to target Linux. > > Linux would become as virus-ridden as Windows. > > > > It would also become a target for data harvesting, from which > > Debian, at least, is refreshingly free. I have no doubt that MS > > makes more money from user data sales than it does from sales of > > domestic versions of Windows. > > I do not agree. This is an argument, i am often get confronted with. > The more linux, the more malware? No, it isn't. See, linux is the > most used OS in the server world. All important companies rely on it. > EBay, Google, Amazon, and even Microsof. Its DNS running Linux. > Cloudflare and others, too. > > So, these are really interesting targets, where you can really hurt > lots of people. If linux would bre so easy to crack like Windows, the > attackers would do. But it isn't. It is (mostly) secure by design. > > There are millions of "viruses" for Windows, but only a handfull of > viruses (or rootkits) for linux. > > And think of OpenBSD: Only 2 security holes in more than 15 years. > How many security holes got Windows in th elast 10-15 years? With all > their money, which can buy any super, duper coder look at the result. > > No, I see it else. It can be done (OpenBSD is showing it). It is the > arrogance of Microsoft (and many other companies). > > It is not the spread of Windows, it is theire bad quality what makes > crackers attack this system. Low fruits, you know? > > And there is another thing, that makes linux better: The developers > want to write stable and secure software. It is theire joy and > happiness. They do not mourn, when someone is telling a bug or a > security hole. They are happy, to fix it. Making theire software, > theire "baby" better. > > In market, the developers MUST do it, for them fixing software is > just annoying and more work (for the same money). That is the > differnce. > > Note: I do not want to claim, linux developers are the better coders. > But they are coding with theire heart. That makes the difference. > > It is not the spreading of software. > I accept what you say, the point I was making is that the more users, and they will be less IT-competent users, the more will login as root. Windows still makes the first user an administrator, and it takes a bit of fiddling to set up an unprivileged user and *always* *use* *it*. It's inconvenient to keep entering the admin password (there's still no sudo, as far as I know), so people prefer to run with admin privileges. In most cases, nobody has ever told them why they shouldn't. This never happens with Linux servers, and not usually with MS ones. I spent a couple of years on the MS Small Business Server newsgroup, before it went to web forum, and in every case of a server compromise it turned out that the admin had been using the web from the server console, obviously as an administrator. I tried to make this point over and over, as did the more sensible regular contributors: don't surf the web with admin privileges, and don't let your users do it. Basically, I think that with many more users, we would see more Windows users and they would be less secure in their habits. We've already seen this to some extent with Ubuntu. I don't think it's any more difficult to write a virus for Linux than for Windows, but the R number for such a virus, as epidemiologists would put it, would be very much less than one, so there's no point. No propagation. I think this would change, but this is of course just an opinion. -- Joe
