this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2022
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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The most secure OS is the OS you understand to properly configure and maintain. If you know how to properly configure and maintain Windows, you can be more secure than a Linux PC that is run without much thought about security.
If the question is which OS comes with the most secure default settings, MacOS surely beats Windows and a security focused and mature Linux distro likely beats them all. However, there are great variances in security based on the distro.
I started to do some security reviews on the most popular Linux distros a couple of days ago - You can read them here: https://decrypt.fail
I doubt that a lot because this argument goes vice versa. You can harden Windows as well as Linux and macOS.
The thing is that most people do not spend hours doing research or harden their OS. This is the main argument when it comes to security, so default settings matter a lot. You cannot expect that average Joe to know what better security settings are, they just have to trust Microsoft and Google.
The underlying point is that Linux has a strong security concept from the begin which makes most malware ineffective. This is proven several times. While on Windows most malware tend to work once Windows Defender is down because this is in most cases users only protection.