When Windows 95 was created, MSFT made some deliberate design decisions that have hobbled security and reliability on Windows forever since. MSFT is finally starting to address the biggest of these issues:
The registry.
The Windows registry is like one-stop shopping for someone writing an attack on a Windows system. You can discover all manner of information about the hardware configuration, the software configuration, licensing, user information, etc in the registry. Microsoft very helpfully gathered all this information together into one place, with a very fragile format and a very non-robust access method, and made the system utterly dependent upon it.
Unix systems don’t have a system like the Windows registry, where so much information is in one place. There’s quite a lot of configuration information scattered in the /etc path in different files - some of them text, some not. But they’re not going to be easy for the hacker to go on a one-stop shopping trip for critical info.
Microsoft realizes the problems with the registry, and they’re trying to plot a path out of the morass with .Net and other ideas, but it will be a long road due to the amount of third party s/w that now reads and writes the registry.
Windows 7 is improved, but if I had to run a system where I needed real security, Windows would be last on my list of operating systems. Unix (and derivatives, such as OS X) would not be #1. VMS would be my first choice, followed by secured versions of Unix, such as OpenBSD, FreeBSD, SunOS, etc, followed by less secure Unix variants (Linux, OS X) and then, at the bottom, I’d put Windows server editions. The problem IMO in Unix (and variants) is that there are three levels of privilege: super-user/SUID, group ID and lowly user. Under a system like VMS, I have lots of priv bits - so I don’t need to give a program god-like powers when all it needs is a very narrow level of privilege elevation. I can set up a program with these narrow priv’s and that’s it.
As for the future of Windows: I think that Windows has unprecedented competition now. There is a new paradigm of computing gaining ground for users, and that’s the smart phone/iPad-like widgets with WiFi and wireless data plans that are going to increasingly cause users to leave their desktops behind. That increasingly takes the issue of Windows’ installed base of desktop applications off the table (the strength behind Windows is the breadth and investment in applications, not the OS itself) and now leaves MSFT on a more level playing field with Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
Microsoft doesn’t win so easily on level playing fields.
Well, okay, I can understand what you are saying, but disagree a bit. Yes, Windows went to the registry system for good reasons but it did leave it open to problems. They have solved those though (mostly) so it is not really an issue today.
Now I can understand your disregard for their corrections and actually hope that a free program version of Unix prevails. Wouldn’t that be great for everyone! The problem is that it is not reality today - Windows is sill the number one system and has some validity in being that.
Until businesses transfer to a free and unsupported version of Unix, we will not see a transfer of OS. You have to understand that businesses will never go to an unsupported version of an OS. Until there is a supported version that is both reliable and supported, businesses will stick with MS for good reasons.
Unix may very well become the personnel version of an OS in the future, but until they become embedded in businesses, they will remain a secondary option.