Question to those that know from someone that does not know.
I often hear that Linux does not have a virus problem
Is this because Linux is not wide spread enough for virus writers to bother with, or is there a built in protection from viruses?
I’ve used Norton for years, and haven’t yet been struck by malware yet. (I know Norton has a rep for being klunky, but the latest version is pretty light on its feet and I barely notice it’s there.)
The real reason I’ve been lucky, however, are my habits on-line. I’m very careful about downloading email attachments and files over the web. I never download a program or visit an unknown site without first googling the name of the program/site + malware, virus, trojan, etc. to see if there’s any trouble associated with it — like those stupid tool-bars everyone wants you to install.
My wife goes everywhere on her laptop — which is why I don’t have her machine installed on a network!
As very seasoned Windows user but a newbie+ Linux user, who has tried just about every popular Linux distro there is and there are a LOT of flavors (see http://distrowatch.com) i think Linux has a lot of potential, and yet substantial problems. While many Linux advocates promote it as desktop ready for the typical Windows user, it simply is not, unless all they want to is do some word processing and surf the Internet.
While many Linux advocates minimize learning curve, this can be quite, substantial, and all one has to do is look in the forums at what users must do for many basic issues, from getting wireless cards to printers to sound cards to work. Users will have to get used to using what is called a terminal, and running commands that begin with terms like sudo, chown, etc, and even be told to compile code. And while more security is nice, trying to gain full permissions to read and write to a second Windows NTFS drive can be particularly difficult depending upon the distro.
Linux has made great improvements in configuring software, and its problems are not all its fault, as many manufacturers do not providing drivers. You also do not have as great a variety, of the same quality, of freeware as for Windows, not matter what some Linux advocates say, nor is getting and installing it done as freely easy as it is under Windows.
As for distros, I like the KDE desktop myself, and I think the PCLinuxOS and Linux Mint are the best, better than the more ubiquitous Unbuntu. I run both. Actually, i would pick Knoppix as perhaps the best (and its start menus is better than others). but it is not made easy to install (legal issues).
And in fact, most Linux distro are most likely illegal in the US (this should get some responses) or soon become so, due to their coming with or downloading codecs and sometimes other coding which are under patents, and which you can use under Windows because MS pays for the license to use them, or have authored them itself.
Some Linux distros do not come with them, but will let you download them, which you will need to play certain formats (like WMV). For this case, i use do not knowingly install these codecs, and try to use versions of distros that do not include them, like the Linux Mint universal installer, or LCLinux OS Minime version, while using Windows XP for my major work.
And over the course of 10 years i have installed freeware over a hundred times with rarely a problem, and with extensive Internet use, have only gotten one virus using Windows. Thanks be to God. I do run scans periodically however, and do check to see what is eating up cpu cycles if it seems sluggish, which it rarely is, and what is set to start up with my PC. And i have lot of suggestions on how to make computing better, like better speech to text, or running programs by voice command, etc.
Installing is easy and when you're done, it's a complete system, with most of the apps you'd need. The hardest part of installation would probably be partitioning the disk. If you do a clean install on a disk by itself, it's pretty easy.
I use my Ubuntu desktop mainly to rip my DVD and CD collection to disk, and it's been great for that. All the applications I use are free open-source. It'd cost me probably several hundred dollars using a windows machine.