the low min specs, the eye candy, and all other pros of linux is great and all, but i really don't trust its security.
if its open source and there are people out there who can code the system files ect, that means that theres a high chance that they could easily gain access to your files ect. yes there aren't many viruses, but if someone who knows alot about linux coding were to make a virus, it could do MUCH more damage to your computer than a virus on windows could because it can go through security ect, and go straight to your data, files, and everything else.
Do you use Linux on a full-time basis to back this up? Are you familiar with the security mechanisms in place in current Linux distributions thus far? Are you deeply familiar with the user and group heirarchy and permissions that is on Linux?
If you do, you'd retract your comment outright.
First, applications normally run on "userland". I won't explain what userland is. Make it your homework. Applications that need to run as "system", privileged, or otherwise having "root privilege" requires root password initially to run/execute. Therefore, for the sake of argument, for a virus to be able to pwn a system, it needs an initial user interaction to do so (user must allow the process to execute). And if , again for the sake of argument, the user is not a root user, then the process will not be able to totally take over the system let alone propagate.
There was a proof of concept virus that was designed for the OS X and everytime, the user is asked for permission (password) for the process to execute. A witty user will immediately know something is going on and hunt down the process and kill it and everything related to it. Same thing will happen on Linux. Plus no admin in his right mind would use a default password.
On the note of Linux being opensource, that is why proprietary software will never beat the opensource paradigm simply for a couple of reasons:
1. there are a lot of people looking at the code and fixing it.
2. fixing the problem is much faster than on proprietary software, usually ranging to a few hours, to just a couple of days.
It is to the best interest of the hacker to see Linux fixed than to see it flawed. Why? it is one of his best tools available and using it flawed will defeat him more than he can defeat his enemy.
If you want more security on Linux, do not rely on it out of the box, even though it is much more secure by default compared to Windows. It is a stupid way for somebody to make a system available to the public by simply relying on default settings.
