Talk:272: Linux User at Best Buy

Not that Macs or Linux are invulnerable to malware. (Anyone else remember the Internet Worm, which would surely have ripped through Linux machines if not encountered on Unix, already, in pre-Linux days. Other exploits have been discovered, and had to be fixed.) Having said that, both types of machine tend to be safer from an OS security model point of view, from being a minority target that is largely overlooked and from the end-users being generally more savvy against liveware component attacks. However with the targetted growing flood of new users, that may well be changing. The latter two points, at least, although I'm sure some of the distros "boot as root" as well.

The speed of Linux also tends to be more from being more finely-honed by the last generation or two of geeks. Less clutter (at least with the distros I like, YMMV with some of the more "user friendly" ones) and the somewhat intimate knowledge of the system that the user tends to get and is able to act upon if anything displeases them (although, again, that may be changing). These days (and those days, I'm pretty sure) you can get mainstream AV programs for Linux (and Mac) and while I'm not going to say they're necessary for Linux, they're available and primed to help you out of various messes you could encounter. 178.98.31.27 08:07, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Approximately 15 years ago I did deactivate the firewall at my main (Linux) internet gateway for some tests only for a few minutes. I WILL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! I only remember the root access was done by a user name r00t and my log files at "/var/log" had been deleted. When I did figure out that attack I immediately disconnected it from the internet, but I also had to do a complete new install to that system. Linux is only secure when you know how to secure it.--Dgbrt (talk) 22:01, 5 August 2013 (UTC)