On Friday 26 December 2008 10:13:27 Surya Pratap wrote: > Rony wrote: > > Windows is quite a PITA to maintain especially with viruses and > > its affinity for corrupting the file system, > > Windows has as many viruses because of its popularity, > security, no matter the OS is actually up to the user, > think of, what a nasty program can accomplish if it is given root > access in linux. >
It is a misconception that windows has virus because it is most popular. 85% of the servers run on Unix, and most of them GNU/Linux and also since they are servers they are exposed. They do not get infected, though they are popular. Desktops are usually behind the firewall so well protected. M$ machines get infected despite that. The possibility of virus in a Unix machine is possible in only one condition: all the applications are running as super user. But, this situation actually defeates the very idea of a multi-user design. Therefore, it is correct to say that Unix OSs are practically immune to virus problem, and M$ machines have virus problem not due to their popularity but due to bad design choices. M$ is not using a known invention (25 year old, even before their company is born) for the benifit of human kind. Therefore they a are actually liable to be sued for the crime they are committing for not providing the benifits of computer science to their customers. -- Nagarjuna G. -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
