It’s really sad that this needs to be said. I 100% agree with the sentiment. The reason I use Linux is because most of my work requires Linux, but I resisted it for a really long time because communities like these are just incredibly toxic and insufferable. Sometimes looking at this community makes me want to rage-boot Windows and become a C# dev all over again.
In this case I actually mainly meant MacOS, which has a relatively big market share. Though for me personally it’s Linux, it applies to all other operating systems, with MacOS being the one large enough that people who use windows can’t ignore it. I’m not a fan of these “here’s what you need to know” titles because it doesn’t add anything, the title would be functionally the same without it. I was making fun of this by saying that I don’t need to know this and thus showing that (this part of) the title is only included to get more clicks
I mean, I’ve been hearing it for 15 years, we can’t be wrong for that long, right? Which means that next year it’s 100%!
Would it even be a good thing if Linux became super main stream? Maybe we should be careful what we wish for.
How would it be bad? More hardware support, more users not feeding data to corporations, more software support and so on.
Bootkitty?
However,
you can already patch your BIOS to become secure again! :)
All in all, Windows security is a joke compared to Linux’s.
bootkitty wasn’t implemented ever and if you use GUID Partition Table and your bios is set to uefi without csm, it can’t affect you, since Bootkitty embeds itself into the Master Boot Record and there exploits the LogoFail vulrenability (this was already patched btw) with as far as i remember, a self-extracting steganographical bitmap image for arbritary code execution to bypass Secure Boot with injecting face certifications to Moklist. Also, it only runs on select devices, far from all Linux systems are vulrenabe.
Windows security is… fine? It could be better, but it’s pretty much on par with linux security. Both have their vulns, but they’re both also able to be secured enough that most (if not all) major data breaches are via phishing or other social engineering attacks, not solely software exploits. There’s lots of fodder for the Linux vs. M$ debate, but this one is maybe a bit out of date.
If you actually dig deeper into the Linux security topic, you’d find out that Linux is actually not very secure. GrapheneOS developers made quite a lot of posts on what Linux distros (and the kernel) are missing in terms of security. A lot of “Linux security and the lack of viruses” rides on the waves of “there is hardly any point of creating malware for a system with such a small user base, plus you have to consider the fact that people knowledgeable enough just to install a Linux distro would be a bit more careful about their computers than the average Joe”.
there is hardly any point of creating malware for a system with such a small user base
Actually the whole world runs on linux, Windows is mostly the low level consumer end.
Which makes your argument true for a certain segment of malware (the cheap low tech stuff more akin to scams etc targeting people en mass but expected to have a low return), but not actually for the parts where the money is that justify elaborate malware and hacks.
uh, you do know there are exploits in Linux right? Stop pretending that Linux is “virus free”
If you think being on Linux makes you immune for attacks, I have bad news for you.
there are much less vulrenabilities on Linux. No system is totally unpenetrable, but having 2-5 vulrebabilities is always better than having 30-40
I’ve got a link for you to click, Mr super secure OS user. I promise your OS will protect you.
you are just exploiting my words. I never said Linux will protect me whatever happens. But it will have a better protection inherently, than any windows
Here I have a cool program to install. Just pipe this link into bash really quick…
It probably makes you a less likely target though. I suppose that bots scan for known Widows vulnerabilities simply because that platform has a much higher market share among desktop operating systems. Besides, Linux distros offer a unified way to update all your software. On Windows, third-party software is often installed and maintained manually.
Realistically the difference is in how Linux mitigates the common vectors for attack that Windows doesn’t. Most malware targeting individual workstations gets in by either supply chain attack, vulnerable web renderer or by tricking the user into installing it.
Centralized repositories with centralized build tooling limits opportunities for supply chain attacks, plus helps prevent users from accidentally downloading a Trojan when trying to grab other software. Containerizing web applications helps limit browser exploits, and less “features” phoning home means a default incoming-deny firewall policy will largely prevent most vulnerabilities from being remotely serious.
So for an individual workstation, Linux is significantly safer from viruses. In the enterprise it’s a completely different story where the threat environment does require defense in depth regardless of your choices of vendors
The way I have always liked to put it specifically is that Linux is not inherently more secure than windows. However Linux is inherently easier to secure than Windows. Namespaces, apparmor, seccomp-bpf, and a very fine grain limited vs super user permission system. Just to name a few top level things.
The tools are all there on basically any system, very well documented, relatively easy to use. And once you set them up they will not randomly change things on you. I say this as a system administrator having to deal with Windows constantly where Microsoft decides that they are smarter than you and fuck your group policy edits because we put out this update and we think this option is better so we’re going to revert like half the shit you did. Over half my fucking job and security is just checking what did Microsoft fuck up about my security set up with this update, and trying to rotate through security vendor 2094726 to fill in the absolute basic security processes that windows doesn’t provide
Sometimes Mint tells me there are security updates available. Happened just this morning. Updating makes me feel good :)
