You said it best yourself: The operating system chosen to run a business was never a serious factor in terms of whether the company succeeded or failed.
While I don’t think that statement is universally true because for certain products OS matters, but generally, why would anybody migrate away from windows just because of a security incident? Linux has had its fair share of RCEs and 0-day exploits. Are you saying Linux is intrinsically better?
The thing is: Windows and Office is insecure by default. Admins react by sprinkling anti-virus on top of it, but that doesn't help any.
It still enables users to open random mail attachments in Office or similar. And Office doesn't have any sandboxing or other mitigation in place, again it's insecure by default. If you enable users to do stuff like this, you have noone to blame if you get owned.
Are the usual Linux distro's better? Hell no! They have the same flawed security architecture as Windows, only without any motivated attackers (yet).
But there are actually secure alternatives: QubesOS and ChromeOS.
QubesOS is probably not that suitable to end-users, they can do too much wrong to twart it's security (using the "financial" qube to browse p0rn... etc.).
ChromeOS is a reasonably secure OS: It's root filesystem is read-only with tamper-proof authentication, user's home directory is encrypted. Chrome runs with the usual privilege separation in multiple processes each in it's own tight sandbox. There is no way to autostart anything.
Even in the nuclear case of a 0-day RCE + chained sandbox breakout + privilege escalation to root, the threat can not persist itself... you just reboot the device and are save again.
And Google has lot's of experience in security, they one of the few who build their own browser, the most hostile environment. They are clearly thinking about security front and center and not as an afterthought (like Microsoft).
The market is an illusion. Until recently I had no means to buy Linux, I was forced to buy Windows (and it is illegal here, but all you get for going to a trial is not even the price of a licence). Even today the options are very few.
The idea of a market works if it costs ~0 to enter a market, consumers have an infinite access to knowledge and infinite time to make a decision BUT make it in 1s when at the store, and also enough money so as to not be a problem. Basically, consumers have all the power and vendors have none.
Nothing is really a market, and operating systems definitely shows it.
> The idea of a market works if it costs ~0 to enter a market, consumers have an infinite access to knowledge and infinite time to make a decision BUT make it in 1s when at the store, and also enough money so as to not be a problem. Basically, consumers have all the power and vendors have none.
I keep trying to communicate this whenever people are attempting to manifest an Invisible Hand to control bad behavior. More people need to be aware of this.
I like your succinct point. I wish there was something so short and understandable for an even fuller picture. Like including that for a marked to price things in a way that works for societies, consumers need to choose long term over short term gains and that the price needs to not make economic externalities of human rights or destroying the climate.
Are you serioulsy implying that everyone had hundreds of MB to spare, the knowledge, the material and the time to do it ? I'm talking about the beginning of the century when the only connection was through 56k. I'm talking about being an underage kid who discovers computing, through whatever exists in the store, and you think downloading an iso is straightforward ?
It's still true today, machines with Linux can barely be found in stores. You can find them online but that's not always easier for people who are not knowledgeable
> only having dial up speed - that's strictly a 90s problem.
Dial up was widespread well into the early 2000's, and even then ADSL started to spread slowly.
> You don't see them in stores because there is not enough demand for them
There is no demand because, again, the market is a lie. One OS is forced to consumers, on the computers they buy in the stores, they use at school, they use at work. That's exactly what I'm saying.
> Very easy to find them online to buy.
Computer literacy of the population is not comparable to the one of people on HN, so no, I wouldn't say it is as easy as buying a linux computer online than buying any computer offline.
Bro you are really arguing for the sake of arguing now.
> Dial up was widespread well into the early 2000's, and even then ADSL started to spread slowly.
Cable became common in the early 2000s, and even if you couldn't get it at home you could go somewhere that had decent speed, certainly to download a 600mb ISO.
Not bothering to address the rest of your contrarian points.
Microsoft aggressively abused its monopoly position in order to make sure that Linux would never win in the desktop market, and then inertia took over, so no we can't say that the market has said anything useful
I didn't argue for moving to Linux. My argument is that we need redundancy. If one system has a huge failure like this one -- we shouldn't find ourselves being hostages of this system.
Similarly, I'm not against Microsoft products being used in hospitals. I'm for transparency of standards, rules used by hospitals to acquire and maintain software, public interfaces, reporting...
If such rules are created and Microsoft is playing by the rules -- then I have no problem with it, but having Microsoft decide what the rules are is a disaster.
While I don’t think that statement is universally true because for certain products OS matters, but generally, why would anybody migrate away from windows just because of a security incident? Linux has had its fair share of RCEs and 0-day exploits. Are you saying Linux is intrinsically better?