Are Unix systems more secure than Windows systems?

Where did I state "[my] expectation of a bug free operating system"? As far as I see I never said such a thing, or even implied it. And where did I state Linux is less or more secure? Are you just putting words in my mouth? o.O

As for the CanSecWest, Flash is what brought down the Windows machine, and that exploit in Flash was also possible in Ubuntu. Flash made sure it had root access to the machines by installing a helper service in the background. The exploit compromised that service, which existed both in Windows and Unix/Linux.

Security is not limited to Operating Systems, most exploits today are at the application level.

Ok, so I'm guessing that Unix systems were more secure at first, but now Windows is starting to become just as secure.

Now for the second question I mentioned. Does Windows have more holes/bugs in the code than Unix systems? I always hear people say that the Windows code has too many holes in it while Macs or Linux has less.

Klaw117 said:

Now for the second question I mentioned. Does Windows have more holes/bugs in the code than Unix systems? I always hear people say that the Windows code has too many holes in it while Macs or Linux has less.

There is no defiant answer, only speculations, most unfounded speculations.

Second what is being compared, the base kernel or the distribution? The kernel would be Windows NT and Linux while a distribution is Windows 7 and Ubuntu. The kernel is the lowest depths of the base OS while the distribution contains the supporting packages like applications and UI elements. Would need to precisely qualify what is being compared before one can compare.

I think we have to make the distinction between Unix and Linux.

The Unix platform is without a doubt the most secure, robust, and stable.
It is mostly used by corporations that have to process huge amounts of data, used by a huge amount of users, like banks, pension funds etc.
Often the users are on NT systems connected to the Unix Mainframes.
I'm not even going into scalability.

Windows security is a joke compared to Unix, but it's comparing apples and pears.
Windows is used for completely different purposes and to make it more usable for everyone, security needs to be compromised.
Users have trouble accepting even a minor restriction like UAC, never mind when they would be confronted with Unix kind of security.

.
Linux although based on Unix is a different ballgame.
It too, like windows is developed more and more with the user in mind.

Comparing Windows and Linux often ends up in dogfights, so I'll refrain from making any comments on either of them.

greetz

Tews said:

squonksc said:

Comparing Windows and Linux often ends up in dogfights, so I'll refrain from making any comments on either of them.

greetz

Chicken...

, more a rooster I would say, and I have the marks to prove it.

Lets just say I learned my lesson.

logicearth said:

Just to point out, I get almost well over 200 patches almost every month for the latest version of Ubuntu. So fewer bugs? I think not.

If you get 200 patches a month for Ubuntu, you must have loaded a ton of additional packages. And in terms of fairness, keep in mind that a lot of these updates are not security it nature, but rather changes in documentation, functionality or additional features being added.

The other issue that I think plagues Windows users more is the that fact that lots of people torrent and steal commercial applications and use keygens and cracks that do who knows what with their systems. In addition, we have all experienced the "free" windows app that you download and install that comes with a handful of other packaged "features" that we didn't either know we were getting or were too careless in our installs and just accepted the defaults and installed them. You typically don't have these things in the Unix/Linux world.

And as Squonksc mentioned, even with simple changes to Windows like UAC...Windows users were so aggravated and annoyed that they simply shut it off in leui of learning to deal with it properly for the added security. And how many users are actually running their Windows box using a standard account....rather than using an account with admin priviledges. And this simple fact is a majority of the reason why so many problems and exploits have proliferated over the years.

pparks1 said:

If you get 200 patches a month for Ubuntu, you must have loaded a ton of additional packages. And in terms of fairness, keep in mind that a lot of these updates are not security it nature, but rather changes in documentation, functionality or additional features being added.

It was a bit of an exaggeration since I don't often do an update for Ubuntu. And its not documentation that is being updated or a thousand packages installed. I keep Ubuntu Server very lean with only the stuff I need for its task. But sofar there is always some application being updated and patched. But my point was that Open Source does not correlate to less bugs.

See, not a dogfight yet, but the signs are already there.

To be fair to both Windows and Linux (as far as you can throw all distro's on to one heap).

Both have their strengths and weaknesses.

Last year I read a very honest post from a Linux lover who actually admitted that most Linux distro's had more (severe) security patches than XP.

He had a list with all the security patches of both the OS's

Where Linux excelled was the speed at which patches were released.
That's the power of open source.

And like PParks and myself already stated, Windows users in general tend to be less occupied with security than Linux users, while they should be more so, since 95% of all exploits are targeted at Windows.

I for one can't understand why W7 still makes our first account admin by default.
Users should be running their daily activities in a standard user account, but then they would have to enter their admin name and password every time they want to change system settings or install apps.

Linux users are accustomed to that kind of security features.

greetz