this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (14 children)

Linux users keep saying you don't need antivirus on Linux and that Linux is more secure and safe. This intrigues me, as I'm moving to Linux, but I never hear any technical reasons as to why this would be. All I see is "there are no viruses because it's a small platform". That's not an argument for the security of the platform so I'm curious to know if there are any technical reasons Linux would be more secure. Every now and then I read about some malware for Linux, so they do definitely exist.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (6 children)

There's little technical reason, at least no security features were ever tested on the scale Windows is every day.

The real reason is nobody bothers to target Linux desktop users because there's dozens of us (dozens!) while there's billions of Windows users. It's about efficiently spending your money and time while investing into crime.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (5 children)

between smartphones replacing desktop PCs and mac computers, I doubt that there's "billions" of windows users left in reality.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

don't forget all the office drones, who are also the main target of scammers

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I didn't, but I considering the world's workforce is around 3 1/2 billion people, and that in the developed world, the percentage of office jobs is around or below 50%, however the majority of the world's work force live in underdeveloped parts of the world, I would estimate the total number of worldwide office workspaces to be significantly below a billion. And - even the number Microsoft themselves claim, appears to be only 1.5 billion total per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems - with this particular quote in the article (emphasis by me):

On 27 January 2016, Paul Thurrott summarized the operating system market, the day after Apple announced "one billion devices":

Apple's "active installed base" is now one billion devices. [..] Granted, some of those Apple devices were probably sold into the market place years ago. But that 1 billion figure can and should be compared to the numbers Microsoft touts for Windows 10 (200 million, most recently) or Windows more generally (1.5 billion active users, a number that hasn’t moved, magically, in years), and that Google touts for Android (over 1.4 billion, as of September). My understanding of iOS is that the user base was previously thought to be around 800 million strong, and when you factor out Macs and other non-iOS Apple devices, that's probably about right. But as you can see, there are three big personal computing platforms.

I think it's fair to say that "billionS" is a bit of an exaggeration - that's all I meant to point out.

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