A question on protection software

[Sandy Harris]

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 6:33 PM, <valhalla2100 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Some while ago I was telling a Microsoft employee why I was interested
> in switching to LINUX.  One of the reasons were the virusus and trojan
> problems.  He told me that if I switch I will need to buy anti-virus type
> software.  He also said that it was a lot more expensive than what is
> offered for Windows

That's bogus. There is plenty of free anti-virus software for Linux.

> (he also told me that the danger was equal

In theory, it is. Any software system can have bugs or design
errors and may therefore be subject to various attacks. Unix
and its derivatives are certainly not immune. For example,
the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm that crashed
much of the net in 1986 attacked only Unix machines.

In practice, though, Windows is obviously the popular
target; there are far more attacks on it than on Linux.
This might change as Linux grows.

There's also an argument that Linux is better designed
and better implemented than Windows, so more secure.
I certainly believe that, but it would be fairly difficult to
produce the evidence that would convince an MS
employee.

-- 
Sandy Harris,
Quanzhou, Fujian, China