3 ms·
The core difference between Unix and Windows, that has persisted since the beginning, is that by default on any Unix you get a user account which is different f
by yason 16y ago
The core difference between Unix and Windows, that has persisted since the beginning, is that by default on any Unix you get a user account which is different from the root account. On Windows, this hasn't even been possible until a few years ago (Vista? 7?), and AFAIK you still have to specifically configure Windows to give you a user account that really, really has no administrator rights. My parents wouldn't know how to do that.
On Linux, if someone hacks my browser all I could ever lose is the stuff on my home directory. Should that happen, I can just log in as root, kill all processes of my user account, rm -rf the home directory and restore the most recent backup, and relogin with my account. Without rebooting.
There are local vulnerabilities that might give you root privileges on Linux, too. But that's already a secondary attack and one of its own. Given the diversity of various Linux builds, it takes a lot more to crack into a machine and if successful, even that one is only one kind of a machine. With Windows, the homogeneity sweeps large installation bases at once.
- pedrocr 16y agoOn Linux, if someone hacks my browser all I could ever lose is the stuff on my home directory. Of course these tend to be precisely the only things you actually care about in the whole system. Assuming it's a desktop machine of course.
- steveklabnik 16y agoWhich is why he talked about backups, and why they're important. This doesn't mean your backup couldn't get infected...
- yason 16y agoI have backups for my files anyway. Everyone should. It's the long, painful reinstallation process that I would have to do on a typical Windows machine to fully restore the pristine installation state after a virus/malware attack.
- tptacek 16y agoThis argument is a load of baloney. Desktop machines, whether Linux, Mac, or Windows, are single-user machines. Attackers don't want "root". They want your documents and they want access to your network, both of which they get just peachy with your user account. The only thing you can do with root that you can't do with a user account is write vanity malware that persists in ways that are harder to detect. But the most effective malware isn't written as a vanity exercise. In Google's case, it's even less important to have root; what Google is protecting is access to their corporate network.