Is Linux Really More Secure than Windows?

This article is another he said/she said thing.

The folks given the task of talking about Windows do the market share special pleading for Windows. But, but, but Windows has lots of really dumb users and they click on anything that promises money or nudity!

I think that empirical reasons exist for not believing the "market share" special pleading. Apache httpd has *always* had a bigger market share than IIS. Has it attracted the malware writers? The 2004 "Witty Worm" infected all 12,000 installations of the (proprietary) firewall that existed at the time of its release. So a few counter-examples exist.

Further, it's taken Microsoft 5 or 6 years of solid, painstaking effort to get to where it's only bad, and not riddled with holes. A slight shift in corporate emphasis, and that effort disappears: someone at MSFT might decide that first-to-market is more important again.

Quoting:This article is another he said/she said thing.

Yep, just gasbagging talking heads. Too bad when there is so much real information available.

OTOH, Android/Linux seems to be more prone to malware/viruses than both WinPhone/iOS. Seems Google did a lousy job; but it may as well be because of Android's market share. Let's face it: At this time, WinPhone is not an attractive attack vector.

We should be grateful Google calls it just "Android" and not Android/Linux like I did above. Because now their lousy job isn't reflected on the Linux brand-name.

And you know why Android is more prone than iOS? Because it follows the Windows-model of 'install anything from the net', while iOS follows the "Linux-distribution" model of controlled repo's.

Quoting:And you know why Android is more prone than iOS? Because it follows the Windows-model of 'install anything from the net', while iOS follows the "Linux-distribution" model of controlled repo's.

This isn't quite true for my HTC phone, and I don't think for Android in general either. The default setting is to allow installation from the Market only, but you can disable this restriction if you want to. When disabling it, you get a warning that installing questionable apps from unknown sources is risky. I imagine that the vast majority of users keep to the Market. Of course, the contents of the Market and the possible effects of Flash etc. are another story.

I shouldn't repeat random stuff I read somewhere... At least not without knowing who paid.