OSNews

"At the risk of going off topic here, I agree with the first part of your message. Security is 99% common sense. That being said, the act of using Linux doesn't make you secure. For the moment it seems that way, as there hasn't been any serious threat in the wild. Do you think it would stay that way if everyone suddenly dropped Windows and switched to a Linux-based os? If it was suddenly a big enough target, or to put it more precisely, _the_ target to attack?"

For the most part I agree with you. However, it isn't because Linux isn't targeted. Look at the server side, plenty of Linux targets there. It's the home users that are responsible. I do believe malware would rise if everyone switched to Linux, but not because it would become a target. Merely because you would have more people downloading stuff and running it without regard to where it came from.

No, people aren't stupid, they just aren't educated. MS is trying, with UAC, but I think it'll take a lot more than that. Your average Linux user is just better educated. I think if people started moving to Linux in droves we wouldn't see the same scale of this problem. The RTFM attitude is diminishing every day, and people would have more than adequate help and education. I could be wrong, but those are my thoughts. As to the actual topic.

I thought maybe someone hacked the entire internet and inserted malware into every site on the internet! Then I came down off my high and realized someone probably just screwed up.

Linux servers get attacked too. A lot of the attacks are brute-force (password dictionary) or application-level (taking over someone's php message board), but they do happen in practice.

I think the design would make it quite a bit safer than windows, but you are right, to make an OS truly secure, users/computer operators need to be educated and informed.