[bigstrat2003]

Windows security is just fine. The problem is that many users are willing to uncritically install anything they get asked to, even to the point of directly installing malware when "Microsoft support" contacts them asking them to do so. Absolutely nothing about Linux or any other general purpose OS protects against this threat vector, and if Linux had the market share Windows does you would be saying the exact same stuff about your grandma getting rootkits on her Ubuntu box. Mobile devices protect against this scenario by not trusting the user and heavily restricting what apps can do, but that's not a good model for a general purpose computer.

[graemep]

> if Linux had the market share Windows does you would be saying the exact same stuff about your grandma getting rootkits on her Ubuntu box

To some extent. I am not convinced it would be as bad.

For one thing, Linux is less of a monoculture.

For another, you can lock it down more for that type of user. You can set it up to make it hard to install anything from outside trusted repos.

[dist-epoch]

You can lock down Windows too, you can restrict it to Windows Store only, you can allow only whitelisted apps to be installed, you can lock down user permissions, ...