(June 4, 2009 at 8:13 pm)Samson Wrote: 2. Linux is very stable and I love their servers/software, and is great for privacy use in anti-virus type programs. (But keep in mind the world usage of Windows in comparison to Linux. I would venture to say that it would be a different story if the scenario were reversed)Actually, this is a common misconception.
Although there are some viruses in the Linux world, none of them can do the damage that Windows ones can for the simple reason that they cannot write themselves into system files. The only viruses I currently know of in Linux use known exploits in Gnome and KDE desktop managers, although they do require a somewhat stupid user to double click an email attachment.
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6229
That said, if you set some permissions wrong you could easily invite viruses into your system, but it is safe to say that the threat of viruses on Linux will remain low.
Of course, as the number of users grows, the number of people who read over the code and attempt their own exploits will increase. The good thing is that because the code is open source, more people are able to fix the exploits. The old view was the closed source code was better because less people could exploit it, but this lead to worse actual code being written, so that when people decompiled it they were able to create viruses very easily. With open source, there are going to be more exploits being spotted, but also more being fixed, and the code itself will be better.
I'm glad I took an Information Security course this year
