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 Originally Posted by Syndil
Fair enough. But yes, IT consulting is what I do, so for someone to suggest to me that Linux is inherently more secure, I have to defend PCs. Otherwise, my clients would be asking me, "If this is true, why aren't we running Linux?" It's fairly easy to secure Windows, especially in a domain environment with policy enforcement, and the ease-of-use for day-to-day business stuff cannot be beat. Couple that with all of the excellent security and backup software... Yeah, takes a bit of cash, but in business, time is money. Most would prefer to spend money on a tried, true and familiar solution than to save a few dollars but potentially run into headaches later. Linux to me is still a hobbyist OS for tinkering with, not suitable for enterprise deployment--except perhaps as pre-packaged and well-supported distros for VM hosts. But as you say, YMMV.
Linux is definitely not an impregnable fortress... for sure. I do think we have differing views on the subject because you come from an enterprise environment consulting large networks and I administer for a small group of less than 30 computers not networked to each other. I have no experience with ANY OS at an enterprise IT level. On my front... the friends of mine that use windows machines are always an administrator account so they dont have to much around with permissions they can just do whatever... which causes problems because they can just do whatever. The windows registry puts all kind of resources in the same place as well. And the access protocol for the registry still isnt all that robust... even on win7 where theve made some good improvements. The whole system is dependent on it too.
Anyway... I think most of the security problems come come from user privileges and poorly written third party applications. Again... I will point out that this is my uneducated amateur opinion.
As far as privileges go... I think Windows is still very much a DOS shell that was never meant to be networked to other computers and has been hacked at and hacked at with these wild Rube-Goldberg indirect methods for multiple user permissions and security in a networked environment. Where Linux, being one of the Nixs, was built with the multiple user model right from the start. That lets the model be a lot less complicated... so there are fewer exploits in the kernel and APIs and such.
Most of security I think though has to do with what you allow the general user to do and what you dont allow...
With third party applications I think one of the fundamental weaknesses in both OS is the C family of programming languages... they let programmers play fast and loose with variable definitions and pointers and such. I dont know how familiar you are with programming as an IT consultant... but this is more in my alley. C is a really loose language... and Ive noticed that a lot of the exploits Ive read about have to do with buffer overflows. It has to do with C allowing you to write past the end of a string without a warning or exception. Theres no run time constraint checking of any sort in C... so a program can be compiled with all kinds of holes. Im trying not to get too technical here, please dont think im trying to insult your intelligence. In this respect Linux is a much more controlled environment. My windows friends download all kinds of crap they dont need. Stupid screensavers, games, browser bars and a million other things they have no business putting on their computer. And since most of them run as administrator all of the time, along with the monolithic structure of the windows registry... these little programs (along with pretty much every program on their computer) have access to EVERYTHING and can wreak damage. Those same exploits exist in 3rd party programs in linux too... but there just isnt as much exposure so they dont get much attention. Thats the obscurity you are talking about... both in the availability stupid installs (there isnt as much available to install for a Linux user) as well as simply not having the user base to attract attacks... but even then... if an exploit is used, the program doesnt have as much access to system vital points in a Linux machine... configuration files are modular and scattered in multiple places around the file system... while most programs can only touch the user specific home directory.
I agree with you though... Linux is still a hobbyist OS... it will never move into the enterprise theatre until it becomes a "supported" os and there are options for cost effective migration. And linux can sometimes still be as friendly as a bag full of angry tomcats...
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Developer of iCopter 2.2 for webOS.