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I was talking about moving in the other direction. That is Linux developers should make their applications run on OS X and Windows. That's not targeting a smaller user base, that's targeting a much much larger user base.

There are other reasons to switch to Linux besides security, although in my experience Linux is much less likely to be infected. Partly because so few people write walmare for Linux. But also package management is vastly better on Linux compared to Windows, driver support is typically better, it takes less resources, better boot times... I find if people are using software that runs on both they see a clear incentive to switch away from Windows.

Sorry, I thought you were talking about things the other way around.


There is far less malware on Linux not because it's more secure, but because it's often not. Linux systems can be extremely easy to compromise as we see time & time again. This is usually credited to poor configuration and administration. What Windows does for you, Linux leaves up to the user. When you have inexperienced users, the holes tend to remain open. And of course Windows being used by millions and millions of people make it a bigger target by default.

I strongly disagree about package management. Linux dependencies are a complete mess more often times than not, which is the result of laziness and poor design.
Disabling optionA doesn't actually remove it and all it's dependencies, it just doesn't present itself as an option to the user. And of course optionA depends on packageB, which depends on packageC, which depends on packageD, E, F, G. This can usually be avoided but that of course requires more effort on the programmers part and I don't know many who bother.

As much as Linux users like to think otherwise, Linux has more in common with Windows than it doesn't. In some ways it's clearly better, in other ways it's clearly worse. The fact that Linus Torvalds himself has ranted about the mess that Linux has become is testament.