For Windows to be remotely secure, you have to care about security. Leave a Windows machine connected to an internet connection without a router/firewall in between, it will get exploited. If you use Internet Explorer at the very least you will get tracking cookies. If you install apps willy nilly from the internet, you will get viruses or malware. Tack on a few backdoors, and you have an OS that strikes fear in my heart.

With Linux, you can apply most updates without a reboot, and patches are distributed ASAP. Not every Tuesday of each month. Out of the box (at least on Ubuntu Linux) there are no open ports by default. One has a huge repository easily accessible via Add/Remove, or Synaptic to install cryptographically signed apps. With an OS upgrade, all these upgrade too.

Ultimately though, what bothers me more is that these viruses and malware, are purely for things like spamming and just “using” the machines. They don’t want the Windows box to stop running, so the zombied machines can be used for whatever purpose…

If a virus were to actually cause the machine to shut down or just stop working (you know, like Windows Genuine Advantage or the forced reboot rather than BSOD. ) Rather than “getting slow” or “why is the hd led on all the time, and the drive whirring” or “why does it take 10 minutes to boot” and polluting the Internet with bogus traffic.

It would send a clear message. Don’t use Windows if your data is important, if security is important, etc. Right now it seems to work well enough, and I think people expect mediocrity from Windows. If that isn’t the case, proponents love to apologize for it, and love to point out how much 3rd party application support there is (which frankly, is independent of Windows, time to port or make friends with wine.)

So will things like conficker get people to switch. I would hope those in mission critical situations would. For example Governments and Military where this virus spread. Windows should have no place there, no money should be invested in it, and solutions that can be independently verified like GNU/Linux would be much much better, no?

That’s an incredibly dim generalization. What’s your basis for such a claim?

There are always exceptions, those pushing Windows because of some kind of personal agenda, but by and large it seems that it is the apathy which allows security problems like Windows to spread. That apathy could be leveraged for good, just as it is currently leveraged for harm. The OEMs have tried on and off for a long time to break free of MS grip. Once, if, the OEMs start shipping Linux, BSD, OpenSolaris, or anything else, then it’s game over for Windows.

Give them pimped KDE, XFce, Fluxbox, IceWm or even FVWM (such as fvwm-crystal) and they’ll go happily about their business. Windows will be gone and no one will notice or care.

There’s still the lobbying and political aspects of the MS movement to contend with then, but the hard part would be over.

And Linux is becoming easier to manage … it still has room for improvement in that regard though.