Why is Windows (apparently) less secure than other OSes? Also re: NTFS fragmentation.

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So every time someone mentions Macs they always mention how they don't "have" viruses and I just read in the Linux forum that you apparently don't need an AV for linux Distros either. That got me thinking, if it's not because of market share (according to Mac users it's because the OS is much more secure not the 10x market share windows has over OSX) then what is it because of?

I'm sure Microsoft aren't inherantly creating an OS that is less secure than other OSs and as the code was pretty much rewritten in Vista it can't be because of legacy code in the code base so what is it?

The only things I can think of are due to the masisve number of confgurations windows needs to run on, but then that makes no sense and that should affect Linux too.

I personally still think it is mostly because of market share, supply and demand etc, but is there another reason?

Also the same question with defragging, why is the NTFS format worse with fragmentation than other types of drive formatting?

 

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Generally it's to do with Mac OSX being very strictly controlled on what gets installed as well as the computer configurations (there being a very small amount of configurations).

The main reason however is to do with userbase.

To make a windows virus, you'd have far more potential targets.

Apparently the userbase is incorrect according to a lot of Mac users, I still think it's rubbish but there have been a couple of posts alluding to slightly more secure features in OSX and Linux.

If OSX or even some of the user-friendly Linux distros were to receive Windows' market share, over night. People would see just how "battle hardened" Windows really is. It's not easy going into a war zone wearing a giant bullseye on your chest and strapped with magnets.

Exactly. Unfortunately that argument is shot down as people point out that if someone wrote a mac Virus (forgetting that there are some out there already) they would have a field day as most aren't protected. I guess one of the big problems with writing a worm for example are that there aren't enough Macs to really spread, you would probably need to make the work spread on windows machines as well, in which case you might as well write one for windows...

Also OSX programs need to be written with another code, specific to OSX, which I guess means there are a lot less people with the ability to write it?

userbase tbh
*nix had an advantage in that most users didn't run as root/admin so anything they ran could not install without asking permission but windows is like that now too.

But as you said windows is like that, yet we still have a lot of viruses.

 

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Windows 7 does it automatically. User never needs to manually defrag.

EDIT: I have just read that the ext4 filesystem will come with a defrag utility. etx3 keeps fragmentation to a minimum, but it does get fragmented over time.

So does Vista in fact. I haven't manually defragged either of my installs.

It's just another one of those things where Mac and linux (but not as much) say when "comparing" the OSs. I thought about it again due to the thread asking for a defragger in the open source ssub forum yesterday, where the guy was told no need. So it's just another one of those fallacies that are trotted out by the fanboys? In which case why do they not need to defrag their drives? It's just something i've been wondering for a while (and I can't be bothered to wade through a load of technical jargon that I have no idea what it means.

 

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Gees! What have I stirred up?! It's just a file system!

 

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Perhaps, but it was the OPs question:



I, personally, wanted to answer that question because I wanted to correct his false preconception that NTFS was bad at handling fragmentation compared to rival filesystems.

Then I accidently offended someone by suggesting NTFS is probably the most advanced filesystem available today (for a number of real-world reasons that I listed) and, yes, the thread got a bit polluted from what was originally just a post-script type question by the OP.

And it's brought up an interesting discussion, it's definately taught me thing or two as I just made the assumption there were only two or three file systems with at least the one that Apple possibly being quite a lot better (as that's what all mac users slate windows for).