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When Does Usability Become a Liability?
nasteric asks: "I caught myself in the middle of a very interesting discussion last Friday over Krispy Kreme donuts and coffee. The discussion had to do with usability and security. Many of the Microsoft Administrators I work with argued the more user friendly Linux becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes. They claimed making Linux a friend of Joe User will require it to 'open itself up' and become more susceptible to attack. Needless to say, this became an endless debate between our Microsoft Administrators and our Linux/Unix Administrators that will undoubtedly continue into the morning. Therefore I pose this question to the Slashdot community. Will making Linux more user friendly result in it becoming less secure? Hopefully your expertise will help shed some light on (and bring to and end) our discussion." Does decent usability necessarily imply the presence of vulnerabilities? Macs seem to have this area down pretty well, with little in the way of vulnerabilities. Can Linux software follow the same route?
Question: Is this an "Ask Slashdot" or an advertisement for Krispy Cream and Apple?
Also, since the editorial already starts us off with an "OS X vs Linux" flamewar, let me add to the discussion... Windows and Linux admins in the same organization? What organization is this?!
Why do people think that the command line is *not* "user friendly"? Do we write books by pointing and clicking at icons, avatars, and pictures? Except under amazing cirumcstances (Steven Hawking, the blind, etc) would you hire an author that did? Then why a system administrator?
As soon as autoexec.bat runs.
You are not the customer.
Is hide the more advanced/"dangerous" features from users that normally don't need them. They're there if you, but if you don't know about them, you shouldn't accidentally trigger them. That's part of good useability, too.
OK, here we go:
Yes, because users are stupid. Most "viruses" at the moment need a stupid user. Also, more users=more damage=more chance of someone wanting to attack it.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
One of the biggest design flaws in Windows from a security perspective is that nearly every service that comes with the system is turned on by default.
One of the biggest design flaws in Linux from a usablity perspective is that nearly every service that comes with the system is turned on by default.
I think that the claim has very little validity. I think the truth is that it "becomes more vulnerable" when the average user is less educated about security issues.
Making Linux more user friendly, in my mind, means improving upon the features that revolve around the GUI. The great thing about Linux is how much you can customize it; you can strip away the GUI and have a powerful production-level server environment. This is different from Microsoft products, as the ease of usability encompases the operating system.
Linux is much more "modular", in that you can build exactly what you want; an installation could take up anywhere from a few megs to a few gigs. The security and vulnerability lies in the end user.
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windows, linux it doesnt matter... Lusers will FIND a way to screw things up... If linux had the larger market share, worm writers would tailor code for it. I dont really think it would change the world as we know it.
Please, no comments about how Mac OS X was "attacked" by a trojan.
It doesn't "expose" some fatal flaw in the OS, nor is it some newly discovered exploit. All it is was an application that displayed a dialog box. Mac OS applications (with the exception of Cocoa applications) have always been able to have:
a.) any icon, and
b.) any name
The only remotely slightly interesting feature of this proof-of-concept was that it stored the executable code within an MP3 ID3 tag, and even contained valid MP3 data. But that's mostly irrelevant, since the executable code could be anywhere, and the code can't even be moved in raw binary form without destroying the resource fork. Though the major media outlets haven't picked up on the subtleties of this thanks to Intego's FUD-mongering and self-serving press release, this "trojan" is nothing more than a Carbon application. (Though, the discussion that comes of this will be fruitful: maybe Apple will revisit yet again the filesystem metadata vs. file extension dichotomy, and discuss novel ways of visually identifying executables, perhaps in the same fashion as aliases.)
So, to get on-topic, no, an OS doesn't necessarily have to become less secure to become user-friendly. Some (most?) of the security of an operating system, both from a user perspective and network perspective, comes from underlying philosophical design principles and fundamentals - not to mention the intensive peer examination that open source software encourages. Sure, some user-friendly "features", such as auto-opening attachments in the preview pane of Outlook, exist to make things "easier" for the user. But this is a wrongheaded approach: a sensible focus on security can solve the majority of problems without necessarily making it harder on the user. Ease of use and security aren't entirely, or even mostly, mutually exclusive.
The key is making security easy to use.
But the age-old technique of "tricking the user" will ALWAYS be possible via various means, on any OS on any platform.
I fail to see any such correlation between usability and security. As many others have said (and will say), OS X really does have it down in regards to their security model, which I hope is embraced on OSS *nix soon.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
...then you should have asked for their explanation of why OS X is more secure than Windows.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
It's the same thing that has happened to other fields that eventually grew to the point where people could do some of the work on their own. For comparison think of publications, once restricted to highly specialized professionals and now available to anybody with a printer and a copy of printshop. Those home-brew print jobs make the pros squeem in pain. Amateur work will always be amateur, and the results will reflect this.
Once Linux gets to the point that it can be administered by people who aren't dedicated specialists, it's inevitable they will try it out and that most of these people will be less careful administrators. After all they aren't dedicated *nix admins and will often wear many hats in their organization. This doesn't mean that Linux is insecure, it's just a growing pain that it has to go through.
Don't forget how many people fall into the "it's working, it's now forgotten" category. These are the people that only perform oil changes on their cars and wonder why it eventually breaks down on them - and there are a lot of them. They won't patch it, back it up or anything else until the day it inevitably comes crashing down around them.
Cheese it, it's the cops!
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Depends on how the make it more user friendly. Most of microsofts flaws come from coding errors and automaticaly opend ports and services that aren't used.
I think linux can be user friendly without all that but with anything the more layers you add to it the complexity and ability to keep it secure will become harder. Not impossible but harder. At least with linux you will know were the problems are instead of having it for 2 years and then finding a patch for it one day.
Take the basic Linux safety measure. Having to log in as root to do anything significant. Win has this as well (admin, power user, etc) , but most people run as admin, partly because of crappy, admin-rights demanding software, partly because Win doesn't really tell you not to, but also partly because its a PITA to remember, and log in with, that secure PW to do any installs or maintenance.
A "user friendly Linux" (Lindows, anyone?) will have to be very, very careful not to end up down this same path.
You need a COMMIT; in there to make sure your transaction runs, otherwise my base will still belong to me. For great zig! COMMIT;
On Windows they call it Administrator, on Linux they call it Root. It's the same thing, the user account that has no restrictions on it. Every user wants to run that way, because seeing a "permission denied" message on their own box just isn't going to make them consider the system user-friendly.
It's really more of a user eductation issue than a technical one. The best security practices are usually in counter to an element of ease of use.
- user-friendly
- vulnerable
and so they think anything that's user friendly must be vulnerable. A classic logic error, whose name I forget right now.User friendly does NOT imply vulnerable, nor vice versa. I've posted before about building secure systems and securing existing ones. The techniques are, for the most part, well known albeit tedious, though I do anyway. (I even posted a security advisory to BUGTRAQ today...)
As long as the people making Linux user friendly keep security in mind when designing and implementing the new features, there will be no problem.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Of course if you have elitist programmer types who use their case-modded Amiga's to talk to talk to each in Klingon don't expect your user experience to be one 'Joe User' can use or enjoy. If you are one of those people who are disdainful of people not as smart as you and want to keep Linux/OSS in the hands of your CRT tanned brethren then by all means continue to disparage and FUD usability all day long - just don't complain about Linux's adoption - EVER.
A few things for folks to remember:
-_-
Usability doesn't mean "avoids security." It means the interface is easy to use. You can do this *with* security. For example, just asking the user to re-type their password before running admin tools, even if they have rights to run them. (No su'ing to root; no process should *ever* run as root with user input/control.) That means that a virus can't just start running admin commands without the user knowing.
SELinux (or, hopefully, a similar system with a sane configuration/management interface) can also assist with this by limiting what vulnerabilities can do.
And the interface design itself helps. Microsoft's attempts at usability equate to "do everything automatically." Compare this to GNOME where the design is based not on automation, but on streamlining. I fully believe GNOME is *more* usable than Windows in almost every way, yet it hasn't the security problems as apps don't try to auto-run executables from untrusted sources, embed scripting languages with system-modification abilities, etc.
In truth, the interface can be designed such that it makes using security easier, vs hiding security away.
The argument is usually phrased as "Convenience vs Security." They can be seen as being opposed. That's not quite the same as "Usability vs Vulnerability" but that's the direction your friends' arguments were pointing.
I'm not sure that it always holds true that you have a single gradient between Convenience and Security. You can have elements of both, and it's not just a fractional position between two extremes.
For example, the 'root' problem is that root or Administrator can do anything on the system, so cracker types will focus their attention on the major prize. The alternative would be to spread rights and responsibilities into fine-grained accounts like "backup" and "network" and "installer" and other capabilities. An attacker has to work harder, but the machine's owner does too.
However, that doesn't mean that you're going to have to allow web browsers and email clients to execute unknown privileged code. Many of Microsoft's engineers in the 90s had no concept of trust and privilege, and it showed. Those few who understood the implications couldn't drive the rest of the overwhelmingly "convenience-driven" corporate culture to really care about the down-sides to an all-root-all-the-time lack of security. Now that Microsoft knows the implications, their inertia has them at a strict disadvantage: they must change, and in so changing, they break their #1 asset: long-term backwards compatibility.
[
"Many of the Microsoft Administrators I work with argued the more user friendly Linux becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes. " Ummm... what makes a Microsoft Admininstrator the authority on vulernability and usability?
and an Indian fellow named "Jack" was assigned my case.
I cannot wait to hear from "Jack" and hear how his beloved "Mets" are doing in this fine baseball season.
I await with interest to hear his small talk about traveling on the "NJ Turnpike" to work.
Tech Support. You gotta love it.
One nice trick Apple discovered is to have the users be non-root, yet still administrative. (Did you hear that, Lindows?) They did this by creating tools that run as root, but which require authentication to run. For example, a mortal user who is an administator can't trash the whole filesystem by dragging and dropping important items, because they are not root. But they can run Software Update, an application for downloading patches, by supplying a username and password.
On Linux you can add users to the group "wheel" and make them sudoers with much the same effect.
Apple also made many important directories like /etc invisible from within the GUI, which I think is a great idea as long as power users can turn it off.
Seems easy and secure to me...
All the "secure code" in the world wont shield the system from a clueless user.
/ /dev/rand > /dev/dsp
As secure as you think OSX is, anyone who wanted to write an application to fuck stuff up, call it "Super Happy Funtime Sexy Game", and email it to morons, could do so just as easily as they could with a VBScript file.
I could write:
#!\bin\sh
rm -rf
cat
echo Linux is teh gay!
Email it to some stupid people, tell them they have to run it as root or else they wont see the video of Condoleeza Rice's tits.
Stupid people will run what came with the box they bought at Best Buy. When those boxes start shipping with linux, they'll be on linux. The REALLY stupid people shop at K-Mart, who I understand are in the business of ubercheap linux boxes these days.
Be afraid, be very afraid, of the rootkits that get put on this new army of lindows boxes.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
As you've noted, Mac OSX has managed it (although in all honesty it probably isn't the focus of as many attacks as Windows). I think that the main problem is that if users are running their browsers, email clients etc under their own uid, and they contract a virus then it's going to cause damage to all their files. I don't know about anyone else here, but I value the files in my /home more than the rest of the OS, which can easily be reinstalled (yes, I do back up, BTW).
;-)
I think that maybe all vulnerable processes, like web browsers, irc clients etc should run under a separate uid from the user (maybe each user should have 2 uid's - one normal, and one restricted so that it can only access a subdirectory of the users home). So rather than Mozilla launching as user fredbloggs:fredbloggs, it launches as "fredbloggs_restricted:fredbloggs_restricted" by default. The user could then chown some directory to be writable to fredbloggs_restricted" for downloads, cache etc.
Maybe this is already implemented? The real problem though is that a user could still build and run something they downloaded, potentially wiping all their files, unless a mechanism automatically made anything they installed themselves, run as the restricted user and not their own uid:gid.
Does any of that make sense?
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
GUIs let you explore until you find what you want by pointing and clicking on things. With command lines, you need to know the commands, and the options, before starting. That means that you need some sort of training before you start using the command line. So in your analogy, you'd have to "learn" the language of the OS before you can start 'writing' anything at all. Learning English actually took you a very, very long time, even if you don't remember it.
Once you have that training, the command line is a very useful tool. But if you can't get the training, and aren't self-sufficient or technically apt enough to go to the bookstore and buy a book on how to use the command line, you're screwed.
That's why people like having icons for things. The message icon is your mail program. Don't have to remember what it's name is, or where it's at. Just click.
I'm in the process of rewritting some small freely available application because the original caused my computer to segfault under two circumstances which I consider normal use. In rewritting it, i've eliminated those errors and maintained the same performance. As well, I decided to start using a memory profiler, Valgrind. The end result is a more user friendly tool because it doesn't crash in normal operation giving bad error messages that only a programmer would understand. It is also more secure... no more buffer overflows.
My point is, moving towards usability shouldn't mean that we should loosen our belts, allowing the user to run amock in the system, we should tighten them.
Usability, however, does have to do with coherent UI design: picking icons that communicate what the button does on a toolbar, grouping menus is a logical way, making sure that there are keystrokes available for commonly used features, etc.
It sounds like the Microsofties have confused usability with Feature Creep.
Now.. the more people running Linux may in fact lead to more vulnerabilities being found, since testing only proves the existence of bugs, not the absence. However, history shows that bugs are fixed much quicker in open source then in closed source, so that's a race Linux wins easily. But as far as usability, comparing the latest KDE and GNOME desktop to Windows XP just shows that as far as usability, Linux may have already surpassed Windows.
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Does any of that make sense? ;-)
Nope. Any system that doesn't allow the user to do whatever they want to do is going to is not user friendly. We've got two somewhat paradoxical concepts here.
Users will always want to be runing at root at all times. Some won't grasp the security implications until it's too late.
Microsoft sacrifices security because, in their model, it is often the easiest way (tm) to make something more user friendly. So from a Microsoft point of view, it seems obvious that security and user friendliness are mortal enemies. That doesn't mean the two naturally correlate.
On the other hand, anyone can make a linux box insecure. The question then becomes as simple as whether you trust users to administer their own boxes. This is where you need user friendliness. This is where the OS has a choice to remain secure by staying obfuscated (and thus scaring users away at the expense of functionality) or become more friendly (at the risk of letting users hurt themselves).
Windows, by default, can be (is?) insecure. But that's not where the "(Microsft vs. Linux) vs. (User Friendly vs. Insecure)" debate should begin.
This means that yes, a trojan horse could run, and yes, it could keep running until the user logs out, and maybe even add a login item on a per-user basis, but it can't install anything into the system that runs at startup unless the user explicitly enters a password to say that "yes, I really expected this to be installing something". This simple authentication requirement would have prevented 99% of what has made Windows viruses so virulent.
In fact, the best form of user-friendly security basically amounts to having a bunch of policies for things that shouldn't generally happen, then shouting at the user and asking if you really want to do that. This concept has been popping up repeatedly on the Mac platform ever since the classic "GateKeeper" virus checker extension. I remember saying that I wanted to see an OS do exactly this sort of sanity checking (don't let an application modify the OS without user permission) back when I was still in elementary school (mid-eighties).
So here's what I don't get.... If this was obvious to me at about age 10, what does that say about companies that still haven't figured out how to implement such a basic security measure? And why would anyone in his/her right mind use an OS like Windows whose security policies haven't caught up to what seemed obvious to a 10-year-old kid almost 20 years ago?
For shame.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If the user doesn't care about security then it is hard to add more security without making the system more difficult to use.
On the other hand a system infected with viruses and trojans can be un-usable.
In all fairness to MS, the Windows history is from a novice single user or small work group. Windows was kinda of thrust onto the Internet, by, well, the growth of the Internet. It is more usable and less secure because of that.
Linux has the whole multi-user UNIX, USENET, geek, Internet history behind it. It is more secure and less usable because of that.
I see Windows and Linux evolving toward each other in security, in usability and in many other ways.
If it's ease of learning, then yeah, a picture is probably worth a thousand words. If it's actual ease of use (which is NOT to be confused with the latter- even though everyone and his dog keeps doing it...), then a CLI may well be the thing.
There's a lot of things that are purely cumbersome because of the GUI under XP or MacOS.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
A GUI you have to learn to click, double click, right click, directory structure, etc. You still have to learn. You are just learning something different. instead of cd [enter] you are double clicking on something. wether you type it or click it you are still learning something.
Evolution or ID?
Things that need to be expressed before my opinion:
:)
-Microsoft does not hire retards. Their programmers are skilled.
-IBM,Sun,Novell,etc, do not hire retards. Their programmers are probably equally skilled with Microsoft's.
-Linux was inspired by Unix
-Unix is a multi-user operating system originally designed during the dawn of computing for big iron mainframes accessible by client terminals via command line.
-Computer "users" at the time of the creation and dominance of Unix knew, more often than not, how to program, do shell scripts, etc. They were very computer-literate. To use a computer in that age meant you knew how a computer worked.
-Windows began as a (more or less) single user operating system intended to run on PCs, not mainframes, and is used more often than not by people who know nothing of programming, or how a computer works abstractly.
Before you jump to say that Microsoft produces crap code, think logically. The Windows O/S may be considered to be a history lesson for all the O/S programmers out there. Learn from it. Sure, they didn't invent the GUI. Sure they weren't the first windowing O/S. But consider that Windows is the first operating system to reach the level of adoption that it has. They have to support every common architecture, network protocol, hardware design, etc, in the world.
If Windows serves any purpose to you guys at all, it is to illustrate what works, and what doesn't. From their example, user stupidity has been illustrated. Never more than now have programmers been aware of the need to balance ease of use with covering for the ignorance of a user. From their example, we've learned that the user really shouldn't be trusted to be a good admin, that firewalls are a good feature to build into an O/S, etc etc. Microsoft has proven useful in studying the effectiveness of GUI systems and their pitfalls.
Don't sit and criticize Microsoft. Take the lessons they had to learn the hard way, and use them to make better code. That's essentially what Apple did with OSX, even though for them it was a lot easier - they don't have to standardize for all hardware and software configs. They offered very limited backwards compatibility, as ugly compatibility hacks aren't good to keep in code
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
You had me at "Krispy Kreme". ;)
Many of the Microsoft Administrators I work with argued the more user friendly Linux becomes, the more vulnerable it becomes. They claimed making Linux a friend of Joe User will require it to 'open itself up' and become more susceptible to attack.
Spoken like a true MSCE. No, making Linux more usable will not open it up any more than necessary. One just needs to make sure that there isn't 1. a scripting host with direct access to the OS configuration, 2. all ports open by default, 3. lots of services open by default, 4. all user accounts with root access by default, 5. applications that can call the scripting host unecessarily (can we say Outlook running VBS attachments on open in the scripting engine with Admin privileges on a default installation?). None of these things really effects users. The two main ones that would affect users are 1. installation programs - just make installers call for an admin password when installed on default-configured accounts - which is what RPM for instance already does - and 2. make passwords mandatory (is that such a usability hardship?)
The problem with Windows is that it's *too* secure. Yeah, you heard me. Try using a Windows box without admin rights. I did, once, never again. It was some time ago so I can't remember what the problem was. And you can't just supply the Admin password, you have to logout, kill all your apps, login as admin, do what you were trying to do in the first place, if you haven't forgotten because of some other app whinging about losing data or something, logout again, restart everything....it just isn't worth it.
So with Windows you have to run as admin all the time, which is why trojans can get in so easily. Win9x effectively runs as admin all the time anyway unless you have a fancy administrator who configures it for you, which most home users don't.
If "user friendly" = "run as root by default" then yes, Linux would end up having the same problems as Windows. But it doesn't have to. Prompting for root password when attempting a privileged operation is one possible solution; if a trojan attempts to run and the root pw prompt appears, hopefully the user will be prompted to think "er, why did clicking on that MP3 cause a root prompt?" and give the game away. I'm sure there must be other solutions.
It depends what you mean by increased usability. A linux expert can do almost anything on Linux right now. Aunt Tillie can't check her e-mail, without risking creating an open SPAM proxy. Increasing usability has very little to do with the underlying code functions, and far more to do with the visual communication of relevant information. As long as the interface does not rely on security through obscurity, improving the interface will only improve security, with things like:
"Warning: Setting Up a SendMail Daemon without checking for security patches may risk increasing the world supply of electronic Junk Mail (SPAM). Perform check for securely signed patches (Default: Yes)? Use Default trusted patch Server patchserver.ThisLinuxVendor.com (Default: Yes)?"
Of course, increasing accessibility also increases accessibility to potential shoot-yourself-in-the-foot things like filesharing. Right now, Security through Obscurity usually protects Aunt Tillie from setting up a SMB share of her entire hard drive. On the other hand, if she does do it somehow, she'll never figure out that her DSL is slow because she's been turned into the leading WAREZ distro for Podunk. Security through Obscurity is generally considered harmful-- but it is Security. Good interfaces can be designed to provide the users with warnings to educate them as to hazards, while letting them shoot themselves in the foot if they really, really want to.
Now, if you talk about increasing the functionality, so the Linux users can do things like install spyware, or DirectX components to reformat their hard drive, then yes, that's likely to decrease security.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
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Linux, on the other hand, has always been a multi-user system (well, it has since it became an OS, and not Linus's hyper-fast text editor). Because of this, and the unix philosophy in general, you'd have to go out of your way to find software that does not fit into the multi-user system model. Because of this, linux can remain more secure, even when giving it to 'joe user'.
Of course, the problem comes from the same third party vendors who don't get it in windows also not getting it in linux. Hopefully, they will know something about a multi-user system BEFORE bringing their wares to the linux world. Then again, the idiots creating cruft like 'bonzai buddy' will never get it, nor do they care.
How to acquire French cuisine in four simple steps:
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
With SELinux, it can be setup so that even root can't do anything it wants. Instead, there will be multiple administration accounts, each with particular permissions. The level of granularity is up to the users (or the distros), and with some experience, you'll see some pretty user-friendly installations with SELinux running (FC2 is coming up)
We'll soon be able to run apache securely, even with a gaping security holes that allow browsers to execute arbitrary code. We'll be able to download code and run it in harmless environments where privilege escalation is impossible and the bounds for operation are clearly set. And this will be the default setup for every linux user.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
I can probably answer this - the main advantage to a GUI is ease of learning what to do without reading a manual. I don't know if you ever read some of the old DOS manuals, but they were written in a way that my Dad or Grandma would never be able to figure out what to do, so they'd try the hunt and peck method.
/lib/help: Permission denied
for instance...
Dad sits down to a computer for the first time ever and see this:
#linux>
In his head - What is the first thing to do? Maybe type a sentence?
#linux>Show me what you do.
Show: command not found
#linux>What the heck does that mean?
What: command not found
Hmm - looks like the first word I type does something. I should try help
#linux> help
#linux> linux
linux: Command not found
At this point, dad tries to read the manual, but it's all so much techno-gibberish that he is lost by the third page. He smashes monitor with his typewriter.
Icons:
Dad starts computer and sees a screen with three pictures and a menu bar with Start on it. He clicks Start, and some more pictures appear. He selects one of the pictures from the menu and it starts the program. He tries to click a picture on the Desktop and it does nothing. He's not really sure what to do with those, but he can run them from the Start menu, so he ignores them.
So what did we learn from this?
GUIs have multiple solutions to the same task while CLIs usually don't (aliases break this slightly, but require being a little less noob)
CLIs require directions to learn at least the basics, and often those directions aren't easy enough to understand for the computer illiterate.
GUIs facilitate learning by showing the options, where with CLIs you need to find the options, and then usually the options for the options.
CLIs have a lot of configurability that GUIs have, but not ease of learning. Even once learned, the options need to be remembered, where a GUI will put them all in front of you if done correctly, although it has a tendency to get buried in submenus (like Preferences).
As far as I can tell, there is no word in everyday English that means 'being unable to speak the local language'.
This is quite a common occurance nowdays. Hop on a plane and within a few hours you can be in a place where you can't speak the local language. But we don't have any word for that condition.
Allow me to propose the new word:
illinguate
from 'illiterate' and 'linguistics'.
You're new here, aren't you?
Below is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Windows was originally designed as a single-user, game-playing operating system. It had no concept of networking or segmented user space or file permissions, etc. These things, among others, were added on later as the need arose.
Windows was originally marketed to home users who wanted to play games and small businesses who wanted to track a few dozen or perhaps a few hundred accounts/clients.
Today, MS has positioned Windows as an Enterprise class OS. People who grew up playing games on Windows should know that this doesn't make sense.
I used to laugh when looking for patches for an NT4 domain that I administered a few years ago. I'd skip all of the new video (DirectX) enhancements that were constantly avaiable. What did gaming/video drivers have to do with domain controllers?
In short, you can't make something into something it's not... at least not without many problems. MS Windows is a classic example of this.
Windows is not less secure because it is "more user friendly" and linux is not more secure because it can be obtuse and seem l33t-friendly. Windows is still locked into a one-box, one-app, one-user approach to things. And until they change that - and demand some basic network savvy from their average user - windows will never be more secure.
The unices were designed for a networked environment with lots of users with varying degrees of access. Security wasn't as afterthought - it was a prerequisite. As long as they are developed properly, adding some pretty icons, some control panels, even some (shudder) wizards will not make Linux less secure.
And since your pro-MS buddies are horrified by the thought of an open-source system,"open(ing) itself up" to "Joe User", I wonder why you're even taking the argument seriously. Burn them some liveCDs (I'd start with Knoppix, SuSE live-eval and FreeSBIE) and ask them to give those systems a good, hard look.
"In a hierarchy every employee will rise to his level of incompetence". The Peter Principle