I like how the title pretends *nix operating systems don't exist

*guitar solo*

there are much less vulrenabilities on Linux. No system is totally unpenetrable, but having 2-5 vulrebabilities is always better than having 30-40

Realistically the difference is in how Linux mitigates the common vectors for attack that Windows doesn't. Most malware targeting individual workstations gets in by either supply chain attack, vulnerable web renderer or by tricking the user into installing it.

Centralized repositories with centralized build tooling limits opportunities for supply chain attacks, plus helps prevent users from accidentally downloading a Trojan when trying to grab other software. Containerizing web applications helps limit browser exploits, and less "features" phoning home means a default incoming-deny firewall policy will largely prevent most vulnerabilities from being remotely serious.

So for an individual workstation, Linux is significantly safer from viruses. In the enterprise it's a completely different story where the threat environment does require defense in depth regardless of your choices of vendors

It probably makes you a less likely target though. I suppose that bots scan for known Widows vulnerabilities simply because that platform has a much higher market share among desktop operating systems. Besides, Linux distros offer a unified way to update all your software. On Windows, third-party software is often installed and maintained manually.

The way I have always liked to put it specifically is that Linux is not inherently more secure than windows. However Linux is inherently easier to secure than Windows. Namespaces, apparmor, seccomp-bpf, and a very fine grain limited vs super user permission system. Just to name a few top level things.

The tools are all there on basically any system, very well documented, relatively easy to use. And once you set them up they will not randomly change things on you. I say this as a system administrator having to deal with Windows constantly where Microsoft decides that they are smarter than you and fuck your group policy edits because we put out this update and we think this option is better so we're going to revert like half the shit you did. Over half my fucking job and security is just checking what did Microsoft fuck up about my security set up with this update, and trying to rotate through security vendor 2094726 to fill in the absolute basic security processes that windows doesn't provide

most servers actually also run linux, even microsoft(maker of windows) runs Linux on many of their servers. linux is just many times better in IO, ram , cpu, and networking. not only in compatibility and stability and security but also speed and latency. all those thigns matter to servers. that said many very small companies store things on a nas and then acces it with windows or mac computers. which can be very annoying if you work at such a place since then you have to use a unstable computer, which has almost no free ram or cpu and will chrash when it shouldn't and you aren't allowed to install Linux on it. but most of the internet runs Linux. actually GNU+Linux is by far the most used operatingsystem worldwide, not only pretty much all servers, and essentially all supercomputers run it, but android, and chrome os also are Linux, but they just run something like a box on it, and people only see the box instead of Linux. then many small devices also run it, and ofcource spacecrafts and such. in normal desktop use the score is much lower at around 2%, however that score is also affected a lot by how Linux users do not allow their os to be submitter automatically to some server, or that those are directly hosted by the developers who will not always share it with those public sources. next to that sites and such tracking what os people use are less likely to get the info from Linux users as they are much more likely to use security tools. steam might be seen as accurate as both on windows and Linux only select people use it, but then you only have that field of people, and then there was the bug where the steam hardware survey had a much smaller chance of triggering when running Linux(even though that might be fixed by now). based on stats for pc desktop use 1 in 50 people would use Linux on pc, however when looking at total use desktop is but a fraction from all computers worldwide.

Got it, stop interacting with the world

I was already mostly doing this so

What would we do when these happen? What could we do in the moment to change anything?

Join an eventual class action?

Taking the internet into consideration, I would doubt "most".

Yep, my company allows me to use Linux but for Compliance Reasons I need to have Microsoft Defender installed and running. Still beats Windows 11 by a mile

and it will suck your servers dry.

And I can do it wherever I want. And my work is in no way interrupted, while the updates go through.

And it had the Edge of not installing Candy Crush

most antivirus apps are very invasive, heavy on resources and even spy on you. Windows defender is usually enough. However, virustotal is still recommended

On one side, if you have a brain you're fine.
On the other side, *glances at general public typing google.com into google* ...yeah

Anti-virus is not going to stop you from stupidity. You classic "Anti-virus" won't stop anything more than run of the mill simple stuff.

Windows security is... fine? It could be better, but it's pretty much on par with linux security. Both have their vulns, but they're both also able to be secured enough that most (if not all) major data breaches are via phishing or other social engineering attacks, not solely software exploits. There's lots of fodder for the Linux vs. M$ debate, but this one is maybe a bit out of date.

Yeah, Linux has SELinux, that thing everyone turns off!

bootkitty wasn't implemented ever and if you use GUID Partition Table and your bios is set to uefi without csm, it can't affect you, since Bootkitty embeds itself into the Master Boot Record and there exploits the LogoFail vulrenability (this was already patched btw) with as far as i remember, a self-extracting steganographical bitmap image for arbritary code execution to bypass Secure Boot with injecting face certifications to Moklist. Also, it only runs on select devices, far from all Linux systems are vulrenabe.

Absolutely nobody is saying that.