[toothbrush]

"Sharing some files" seems vague though: i'm not sure if i correctly understand the attack vectors, but apart from running untrusted binaries (and as a normal user even that doesn't sound too scary -- or does it?), i guess it'd be via things like targeted exploitation e.g. buffer overflows or somesuch? Other than that it seems unlikely (but far from impossible of course) that an adversary could simply make my machine do evil stuff like spamming or leaking my files. (edit 2:) Also, i have to trust my distribution... That's actually the part i find most worrying.

edit: Also, i'm not sure i agree with you that Windows being the most widely used OS is the reason for the proliferation of viruses for that platform. As i understand it (not wanting to start a flamewar here, i genuinely don't know), it also suffers from some poor security architecture -- but maybe my information is outdated. But sure, the fact that "everyone" uses it makes it a more valuable target, of course.

[danielweber]

At a high level, Windows and OSX share the same general security architecture: most stuff happens as a user, with root called in when necessary.

The single best advice to not getting infected is to not do stupid stuff.

[kodr]

your linux could be used as a shared drive (samba), without executing stuff. It could be nice to scan files if they can be used on other OSes.

As for Windows being unsafe, sure, it's easier to propagate stuff since you have root access. But like I said, viruses on OSX do exist.

[toothbrush]

I'm not sure i understand: do you mean i should scan my files, in case i share a file which would infect a Windows box? If so, i don't think i care. If you mean something else (i.e. somebody planting evil files on my "share"), please elaborate.

I also stated i do not run external-facing services. That applies to the Samba example, too (although i was fibbing: i allow keypair-only login via sshd).

[kodr]

> in case i share a file which would infect a Windows box?

yes, that's what I meant.