[Discuss] Most Dangerous Operating System

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 05/07/2012 04:03 PM, Derek Martin wrote:
> On Mon, May 07, 2012 at 02:55:34PM -0400, Richard Pieri wrote:
>> I used to describe Macintosh as the best Unix desktop in the world.
>> As of today I describe Macintosh as the most dangerous operating
>> system in the world.  It's not the recent, highly-publicized flaws
>> in it.  Rather, it's the philosophies, the carelessness and
>> ignorance, that permitted them to occur in the first place.
>> Security holes can be fixed, but bad design is forever.
> So to what do you attribute the decades-long constant stream of
> serious security flaws in Microsoft's offerings?  I guess it's not
> "the philosophies, the carelessness and ignorance, that permitted them
> to occur in the first place."  Seems to me Apple's got a long way to
> go to catch up to MSFT in that regard...
>
>
The major differences between Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux are that
Windows is the most deployed desktop OS both in business and personal.
And in being so, they are the most attacked. Mac owners were essentially
protected by their relatively low installed base. Early on, the Mac
filesystem did not have some of the inherent ownership/permission
schemes that Linux and Unix has, but I'm not sure if that is true any
longer. It was designed for ease of use. However, now there are Mac
specific viruses. One of the guys in an adjacent office has been the
recipient of a Mac virus. No OS is immune to attacks. One of the issues
I have with some Linux distros is the dumbing down. Fortunately in
Linux, our customer base is a bit more sophisticated. As far as Apple is
concerned, they need to start addressing security. Another advantage of
both Windows and Linux is that there is a major emphasis on servers. In
Linux, the primary difference between a "server" and a desktop system is
configuration. In Windows, while Windows NT was the original base for
both, Windows Server is effectively a different product.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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