Is Windows more secure than BSD/Gnu/Linux/UNIX?

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[i] Originally posted [

Now, I want a good clean discussion. Flames should be intelligent smart ass comments. Not the crap excuses for flames I've seen lately.

3. I really don't care if you're an MCSE who trained yourself to believe the crap you got spoon fed.

If you don't believe me, take a regular copy of Windows XP, NOT RESTORE DISKS, but just the one CD that Windows XP comes with, and reboot your machine with it, format, and install it.

Windows has :

The Kernel

The User Interface

Windows update

A command prompt

Two text editors

Outlook virus spreader express

Windows Messenger

Windows Media Player

Internet Explorer

Windows Explorer



Linux has :

A LOT

About 7,000 programs. Most of which are optional software, but to be fair, I will strip Linux down to nothing but software that Windows comes with:


Since Windows has the software I listed by default, putting the same type into Linux should be fair, so for one thing :



Strip away everything from Linux except the equivalents of what Windows has:


Kernel

User Interface (Shell) (Which I am NOT listing X, because it's a separate program, unlike Windows, which MAKES you use a mouse, so deal with it)

The update is not the same on every distribution, so I'm not listing one.

Bash shell

Two text editors :

Vi

Emacs

Notepad and Word pad could'nt touch either of these, but again, I'm being fair.

Mutt E-Mail client, which can't spread viruses, worms, or load HTML E-mails, which risks your computer.

Linux also does'nt have an annoying messenger service built in and turned on by default, so I won't list one here. Although I guess you could use "talk" or the mail program.
Xine
Links
Midnight Commander

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Having not read any previous remarks to this thread( I am feeling a bit lazy tonight )
Hrm welp, let's see here. Microsoft has a dysfunctionall firewall, an overly friendly address book, a penchant for spreading worms, and a history of crappy protocol implementation. But it has antivirus too, and 1 in 3 fails to detect new viruses! That being said, SP 2 is a vast improvement. and SFU has some redeeming qualities.(it's free). In terms of the free software you were talking about...a lot of it runs on windows.

hrm I am an MCSE you know, and the food on the spoon tasted like manure.

Widows, more secure than linux or BSD? that just cracks me up. It's amazing what companies will say when they are paid enough.

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To the whining seniors who bitch about how good AO USED to be, well, here's another chance to have a good discussion, so get off your ass and discuss. [/B]

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*lifts self off of ass and gets on soapbox.

*FART*

Lave it to Hoofy to point out the obvious.

I have my captain obvious hat on top of my tin foil hat tonight :-D

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Originally posted here by hogfly
Having not read any previous remarks to this thread( I am feeling a bit lazy tonight )
Hrm welp, let's see here. Microsoft has a dysfunctionall firewall, an overly friendly address book, a penchant for spreading worms, and a history of crappy protocol implementation. But it has antivirus too, and 1 in 3 fails to detect new viruses! That being said, SP 2 is a vast improvement. and SFU has some redeeming qualities.(it's free). In terms of the free software you were talking about...a lot of it runs on windows.

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Access to the outlook address book was restricted way back in Outlook2k SP2. But even then, that is an office problem, not a windows issue. We are not talking about application vulnerabilities here... Going a bit more into that, MS put additional macro protection and AV protection into Outlook in Outlook2002(over two years old...) If you want to have a productive discussion talking about how things were two years ago is pointless as security is an ever evolving beast that changes weekly.

What antivirus does windows have built in??? I've never seen it, and I can point you to plenty of articles that state why MS has not implemented it yet... 1 in 3 viruses get through without being detected?? Please, state a source. I've been running various flavors of AV for years and I have never had an infection.. And what's dysfunctional about the firewall? It works just as well as any other personnal software based firewall out there.. And vx'ers spread worms.. not an OS..

I think that the main thing that these types of threads can do is dispell the baseless myths that proponents of one OS or the other try to spread...

well let's deal with this one at a time.

yes outlook was "fiixed", that does not stop address books from being pillaged. Hence the overabundance of MM worms, that pilfer the address books of outlook and outlook express. If this wasn't a problem in WINDOWS, then why would microsoft have addressed it in service pack 2 for outlook express? hmm? yes the field evolves daily..just like agobot, but history repeats itself, and microsoft only perpetuates half of the problems. One problem is that not a whole lot in the windows world has changed in 2 years....You can still null session a box, and netbios is still an option and even required in certain domain trust situations.

Microsoft has AV in testing currently, and my statement was directed at the recent bagle.AO(symantec) variant. When this was in the wild, 1 in 3 AV programs failed to detect it. The programs that detected it were listed on the ISC page. The page has been removed because the worm was identified. The simple fact is, if windows didn't suck so much ass, then half of these worms wouldn't be an issue. Note, that I pointed out that Sp2 is a vast improvement...they seem to have gotten it right(sort of). I have tested a number of recent worms against it, and have not had luck infecting it. The firewall? Let's see, how about lack of egress filtering?

baseless myths? They are hardly baseless, and they are hardly myths. Anyone with half a brain would know that.

Baseless myth: Quality discussion can be had in any Operating System A is better than B at C when people ignore the facts.

Having spoken to hog on numerous occasions recently about his work, I'd say he has at least a good feel for how XP SP2 will behave in relation to certain security concerns.

That aside, I do think that it is somewhat improper to count vulnerabilities without considering scope of affected userbase, scope of the vulnerabilities (root-access requiring race conditions are inherently less of a vulnerability than remotely exploitable Secure SHell vulns), time to patch, et. al..

Windows has always been plagued with worms and viruses ever since it has been able to have them. Interconnecting most of the computers on the globe contributes greatly to the number and propogation rate of viruses. Whether it's a right or wrong comparison, were I to switch my computer from say, Windows 95 to XP or to Linux, at the moment, XP SP1 still has many vulnerabilities and issues (even if I updated EVERYTHING), and a greater chance of being hit by a given virus. Compared to Linux, running Windows will prove to be a far riskier proposition in the security sense, and IME slightly less so in the useability sense.

In that light, I'd have to say it falls to your primary concern, and let's face it, for an end user, useability comes over security every day.

Wow, this thread turned out much nicer than my thread on the same thing..probably because gore took a better approach. Mine turned into a flame war.

I would comment, but I'd just be repeating what everyone else has said.

I'd just like to say that if all the good computer games out there were coded for Linux as well, I would trash Windows right here and now.

I didn't read past page 2, so if anything said in this thread makes my post sound incredibly stupid, blame it on my laziness, not my intelligence.

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Originally posted here by mjk
Wow, this thread turned out much nicer than my thread on the same thing..probably because gore took a better approach. Mine turned into a flame war.

I would comment, but I'd just be repeating what everyone else has said.

I'd just like to say that if all the good computer games out there were coded for Linux as well, I would trash Windows right here and now.

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Doom, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Tux Racer....What more do you need exactly?

As for your thread being a flame war, presentation is everything :)

Chsh has a good point about end users, they don't care about much more than it being able to look pretty and send the forwards they get in Email daily.

Return To Castle Wolfenstein

Vice City!

I'm going to get Unreal Tournament though. Never knew they had it for Linux free.