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Viruses and Market Dominance - Myth or Fact?
rocketjam writes "An article at The Register, authored by Scott Granneman of SecurityFocus, examines the conventional wisdom that if Linux or Mac OS X were as popular as Windows, there would be just as many viruses written for those platforms. Mr. Granneman bluntly says this is wrong, then proceeds to detail the fundamental differences between those OS's and Windows which make Windows an easy and inviting target for virus-writers, as opposed to the Unix-based platforms."
Just gotta love this: advocacy disguised as so called 'objective journalism'. Firstly, the point if moot: 'what ifs' are not a valid line of reasoning. Perhaps Linux would be less vulnerable - but we will never know, because it is not as popular a desktop system, as MS stuffy thingee is.
Secondly, maybe the very aspects of Linux that would prove it more secure render it less popular. Actually, I am quite certain that this is the case.
Besides, I do not think anyone in his/her/its right mind considers Linux superior just because its concept is so dated.
-m-
I would like to die like my grandfather did - sleeping. And not screaming in terror, like his passengers.
There are some good points in the article, but also some that really don't hold water.
* If it is too hard to run an executable sent as an e-mail attachment, this is a lack-of-feature in Linux e-mail software, not a feature. It should be capable of automatically correctly setting file modes when saving an executable attachment.
* The "strong community around Linux" argument would fall over if Linux became as widespread as Windows - so this is really just the "only because Windows is so popular" argument in disguise.
* Outlook uses IE to display HTML - who would write an entire new HTML engine when they already have one to hand? (This can become a problem if it is unnecessarily run with Admin priviliges. Unix has had problems with this, where a big program does one little thing that needs root, so it runs as root, then exploits in other parts of the program give root access. I think most of these are fixed now.)
* Many criticisms are about MS's applications, rather than the OS - e.g. Kmail's policy to HTML compared to Outbreak's. (This is still MS's fault, but it is Outlook vs KMail rather than Windows vs Linux. Unlike the OS level complaints, MS could fix these quickly if they cared.)
Some good points:
* Windows users running with Admin priviliges. In Linux, when I try to install a new package I get a box popping up asking for the root password. In Windows, I have to log out and then back in as Admin to install anything - this pain encourages users to grant Admin to their normal accounts.
* Window's intertwining of OS, application, data - in particular, non-Admin installed DLL's which then get run by Admin. (I'm taking his word for this - I don't know windows enough to know if this is so.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Oh, come on. Is your mom really as stupid as a horse?
Don't let the lusers get you down.
It is not /home, it is YOUR home. You the idiot who decided to infect the machine. Everyone else's data is safe.