[okasaki]

Ubuntu ships with AppArmor enabled. Fedora ships with SELinux. It's been that way for a long time. Other distributions like Arch come with packages for other frameworks, including grsecurity.

But I think the primary "technical mechanism" that makes Linux more secure is the fact that users install software from distribution repositories, rather than from the web. The repos are basically impenetrable since packages are signed and contributor identities confirmed with WoT (I've never heard of there being malware in a major distribution) and security updates are deployed to everybody very quickly.

[wfjackson]

>I've never heard of there being malware in a major distribution

Not much to stop malware if desktop linux becomes more popular.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/how-much-more-malware-is-...