Why is there no competition for the PC - OS market?

[MrHappy]

User-friendly? A desktop without search, without extendable file manager, even without keyboard switcher in a standard configuration?

Linux more secure than Windows? A user password for Windows can use several thousands of different characters. For Linux? Only 94.

Like I said it is RELATIVELY user-friendly for those that know the linux systems to some degree. There is a search feature as is there is file manager. I really don't know what you are talking about. This Video overview clearly shows what you think it's lacking.

As for why Linux is more secure? It has a lot more to do than just user passwords. If windows was so secure then why is it that Linux is mainly used by

U.S. Department of Defense
U.S. Navy Submarine fleet
Federal Aviation Administration
U.S. Federal courts
New York Stock Exchange
Hell even the Postal services use it
Also world wide it is used by the government in Munich Germany, Spain (the strongest supported and user of linux from a national government standpoint), French Parliment, Commercial Bank of China...even Government of Mexico uses it.
Not to mention Novell, Google, IBM, Panasonic, Cisco, CERN, Amazon (yes even them), Wikipedia, Toyota, Sony (particularly PS3)

Honestly, no offense but you should do research before you try to argue. As my sig says I am a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and I like windows. I think it is great for home and business...however...and this is the big one...i would NOT use windows for the networking architecture nor for its security. It is great for Users and interaction on the front end of things...but the back end? the black-box stuff i would use something that is more secure and less prone to back-doors and other malicious network intrusion stuff.

[yurano]

As for why Linux is more secure? It has a lot more to do than just user passwords. If windows was so secure then why is it that Linux is mainly used by

U.S. Department of Defense
U.S. Navy Submarine fleet
Federal Aviation Administration
U.S. Federal courts
New York Stock Exchange
Hell even the Postal services use it
Also world wide it is used by the government in Munich Germany, Spain (the strongest supported and user of linux from a national government standpoint), French Parliment, Commercial Bank of China...even Government of Mexico uses it.
Not to mention Novell, Google, IBM, Panasonic, Cisco, CERN, Amazon (yes even them), Wikipedia, Toyota, Sony (particularly PS3)

Honestly, no offense but you should do research before you try to argue. As my sig says I am a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and I like windows. I think it is great for home and business...however...and this is the big one...i would NOT use windows for the networking architecture nor for its security. It is great for Users and interaction on the front end of things...but the back end? the black-box stuff i would use something that is more secure and less prone to back-doors and other malicious network intrusion stuff.

You realize that Linux is used a lot because it is highly customizable and exceptionally light weight right? The fancy UI and abstraction of Windows/OSX are pretty useless for a lot of professional tasks. It has nothing to do with its security, that stuff is added by the client themselves.

Security of consumer distros is an important issue and can't be addressed by pointing to the fact that big companies/entities have developers to fine tune their versions of Linux for security.

[The Cat]

Linux/UNIX is more secure than Windows... that's pretty much common knowledge I would imagine. It's starting to change now that Windows has a Server Core option... but still, most companies have a Linux/UNIX box on the backend.

[Cyanotical]

when you remove user desktops from the numbers linux dominates, most servers, firewalls, routers, etc run linux, iirc something like 90% of non desktop computers run linux

as for server core, i would guess that most of the time those are running on ESX or Xen Hypervisor (non citrix version)

as for the DoD running linux, maybe for servers, but not desktops, uncle sam loves his powerpoint

[nocturnus]

I find this comment to be a little disingenuous. The ipod has a lot more to do with Apple's company value than their PC OS, which has had pretty flat demand throughout Apple's massive climb in stock valuation.

iPod uses iOS, iPhone uses iOS, iPad uses iOS etc... But yes, you're right about the fact that Apple's success isn't ONLY based on their PC's. Flat though? No. Mac users (MBs and iMacs) have grown quite a bit and OSX has actually become an extremely successful platform among the non-geeks.

[SodiumChloride]

Bill Gates wasn't even remotely thinking about popularity when determining the viability of backwards compatibility being an absolute for windows. Which isn't even 100% as sometimes compatibility mode doesn't work.

I have read extensively about MS. Gates is a very smart man. Very ruthless, mercenary and quite a conniving weasel, but smart. Gates knew that keeping legacy applications functional and maintaining the application ecosystem was vital to Windows success and survival. He did just that. It wasn't always perfect, but most of the time it worked out alright.

[MrHappy]

You realize that Linux is used a lot because it is highly customizable and exceptionally light weight right? The fancy UI and abstraction of Windows/OSX are pretty useless for a lot of professional tasks. It has nothing to do with its security, that stuff is added by the client themselves.

Security of consumer distros is an important issue and can't be addressed by pointing to the fact that big companies/entities have developers to fine tune their versions of Linux for security.

Fine tuning and what not is fine. I mean linux is INHERENTLY more secure than windows. I am not saying Linux is infalliable but a key and huge advantage lies in how account privileges are assigned. In windows users are typically given admin access by default. Unless you are in big organization using active directory or have set up multiple users on PC's then any virus target at the clients will typically have/gain admin rights. With linux users do not usually have root/admin privilages and are given lower-level accounts by default. Thus if a system is infected it won't have permission to access the majority of said system. This also ties in Social Engineering. Trojans/Worms/Viruses can be sent via email and on windows once you open it chances your system will be infected and unless your AV will detect it ahead of time it is usually too late once it is open. On a linux system for this damage to occur you need to open email, save attachment, give it executable permissions, then run the executable.

The fact that it has very diverse customization inadvertently boosts its security partially as well. For windows everything runs on essentially same technology. My windows will use same tech as your windows. if a virus can infect my pc odds are it will yours as well. Linux can run on many architectures, there are many shells, packing systems and UI's. If a virus can infect my pc, it does not mean it will infect other linux pc's...odds are that with same/similar set up or configuration it will but the scope is much more narrow in linux vs windows.

Another point is how you get new software on these systems. For 99% of cases the package manager in linux will automatically download and install the cryptographically signed software that had been validated from a chain of trust. And it will also use the same system for updates. Now look at windows. Unless you have a didgitally signed CD from the manufacturere what do you do? You go online, you search for it, the files at times are stored on insecure (http) file-hosting sites, you download it and you run the risk that someone could upload their software with spyware/bloatware/trojan horses. If you are really unlucky or picked a bad place to download you could be subject to a MITM attack and download/install some virus instead. Also for every software and application, each has its own (different) installer/automatic updater.

Personally I care about application security. Lately Microsoft is leading when it comes to application security. There isn't an application that I would be worried for linux given what I do. We can argue which system is superior/inferior till the cows come home. Bottom line for network security is the management of the network and operating systems within the environment. With proper management windows can be very secure but that task is harder when compared to Linux. Network Admins will always have an easier time maintaining Linux based system due to its inherent design (and lets be honest it also reduces PBKAC when it comes to network security)

P.S. PBKAC = Problem lies Between Keyboard And Chair

[a21fa7c67f26f6d49a20c2c51]

I am not saying Linux is infalliable but a key and huge advantage lies in how account privileges are assigned. In windows users are typically given admin access by default.

That hasn't been true for several years. UAC prompting is the method by which normal users elevate privileges to admin when additional access is needed. It's comparable to the Mac OS X "this program is attempting to modify x, provide your user account password if it's okay" dialog and similar features in Linux (ie: sudo). The popular linux distributions are very similar to Windows/Linux in this respect.

lt. Thus if a system is infected it won't have permission to access the majority of said system.

You rarely need root access to do real damage on a typical end-users system. If a user can run arbitrary applications then he or she can run a key logger or a spam relay just fine. You don't need root to rm -rf ~/ either.

Even in the case where you did need root to access some core functionality (ie: listening on /dev/sndx used to require elevated permissions to prevent rogue users from listening to attached microphones), it's not like privilege escalation is particularly rare. It's fun to talk up sudo because the basic idea is simple, but it isn't unique and it isn't even a good fix for most of the problems people face today. Most people are perfectly willing to give you their root password provided you promise a picture of tits. We need systems like Windows Defender to protect determined but ignorant people from themselves.

. Bottom line for network security is the management of the network and operating systems within the environment. With proper management windows can be very secure but that task is harder when compared to Linux. Network Admins will always have an easier time maintaining Linux based system due to its inherent design (and lets be honest it also reduces PBKAC when it comes to network security)

sed s/Linux/System 7.5.1/i and the argument is just as strong. You'll need to do better than blind assertions for us to take this claim seriously. Even if somebody was willing to grant this - they could still object "fine, Linux is great if you can afford a $80,000/year admin to maintain it for you. Most people are responsible for maintaining their own computers and don't have that luxury."

Even in the case you can afford an administrator to babysit your Linux computers, and the case where we grant that Linux security > Windows: why hasn't it taken off? A good argument is that the increase in security doesn't outweigh the cost in productivity (taken to an extreme: a computer powered off and locked in a vault is the most secure thing ever, but it's hard to get any work done with it). If the increased security comes at the cost of substandard software (that is, software which is so difficult to use that work suffers) then what good is it? Security isn't the end-all goal, it's important but not so much that we have to sacrifice everything for it (otherwise we'd all keep computers in vaults). One can argue that whatever security gains Linux might offer come at too high a cost to be worth considering.

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OpenBSD is great and all - I've had beer with Theo a couple of times, he's not even as big a prick as he's made out to be. The problem with OpenBSD is that if you want to maintain the security you can't install new software: Only the base packages have been audited. Want a supported version of Ruby: you're SOL because only 1.8.x is supported (which is EOL'd in 8 weeks and was deprecated for ages). Want to use Apache 2? No deal: only 1.3 has be audited and blessed. Last I checked it was still shipping with Bind 9.4 which is coming on on 10 years old now. You can install the recent versions of all that stuff (typically by compiling from source because OpenBSDs ports library is pretty horrible compared to a popular Linux - but then your much vaunted security goes out the door. That's not to say the project is pointless, but it's really hard for me to make a case that OpenBSD is much better than a bear-bones Linux without anything installed/running: it's pretty hard to exploit stuff that isn't running/installed.

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One problem about talking "Linux" is that it's such a nebulous target. What do you mean by Linux? just the kernel? The popular GNU tools bundled with it? A particular distribution like Ubuntu or Redhat? Does android count? When you have such a vague target it's important to make very clear statements and not to generalize too much. "Oh, that bug in kernel 2.6.3 doesnt' count because I use <distro x> that was on 2.6.2", "everyone knows ubuntu has a great UI and package manager", "Sure, you can get long support contracts with on-site experts, just talk to Redhat!", "Oh yeah, linux is free in every sense of the word: just look at debian's policy!"

That's fine, but it feels a lot like trying to argue "Fast food" as a concept is "healthy, cheap, and delicious" because Jugo Juice and Subway have low-calaroie options while at the same time pointing to the "great taste" of McDonalds and the low price of KFC buckets-o-chicken. Individually those claims might be true, but there is no $0.99 family-meal of 100 calorie bigmacs. IMO claims about "Linux" need to be a lot more specific if we're going to talk about them seriously.

[Tackhisis]

I really don't know what you are talking about. <link> clearly shows what you think it's lacking.

I would be impressed with this in 1996. But now it's 2013 and Windows 98-like GUIs don't cut it anymore.

...why is it that Linux is mainly used by
U.S. Department of Defense
U.S. Navy Submarine fleet
Federal Aviation Administration
...
Hell even the Postal services use it

I see a certain pattern here with those being governmental organizations. We all know how they do work.