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Permissions on Linux make such tribute unnecessary. Without quibbling over the definitions of viruses and trojans, I tell them that neither can execute on your machine unless you explicitly give them permission to do so.
Which the typical user just does.
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Permissions on Linux are universal. They cover three things you can do with files: read, write, and execute. Not only that, they come in three levels: for the root user, for the individual user who is signed in, and for the rest of the world. Typically, software that can impact the system as a whole requires root privileges to run.
True. Windows achieves the same thing using Access Control Lists which give you finer control. Some new Linux filesystems are moving towards ACLs rather than the old system described here
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Microsoft designed Windows to enable outsiders to execute software on your system. The company justifies that design by saying it enriches the user experience if a Web site can do "cool" things on your desktop. It should be clear by now that the only people being enriched by that design decision are those who make a buck providing additional security or repairing the damage to systems caused by it.
This was true for home versions of Windows up to Windows ME. With the launch of XP (and earlier versions of Windows NT) they adopted the concepts of admin and "normal" users. Unfortunately doing so broke an awful lot of applications because they were written assuming they had full control of everything, forcing MS to make users admin by default lest everyone go "oh, XP is crap, nothing works on it". With Vista MS pushed the issue a lot harder, introducing UAC to throw up a promp every time an app tried to do something that required admin rights. This was not a security measure it was deliberately intended to annoy people, highlighting badly written apps that really should have been sorted in the 8 years since XP came out. Linux has the advantage here in that it has used this model from the start and thus 99% of linux apps are designed for it, however it is false to claim that MS deliberately want to enable outsiders to run stuff on your system.
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Malware in Windows Land is usually spread by email clients, browser bits, or IM clients, which graciously accept the poisoned fruit from others, then neatly deposit it on their masters' systems, where malware authors know it will likely be executed and do their bidding -- without ever asking permission.
All of these programs (well maybe not some particularly badly written IM clients) these days ask your permission before saving or running attachments, and throw up warning messages if the files are executable. None of this stops idiot users from just clicking OK because they want to see the awesome free screensaver that some random bloke in Nigeria just sent them.
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Some malware programs require that you open an attachment. Others don't even require that user error. By hook or by crook, malware on Windows often gets executed, infecting the local system first, then spreading itself to others. What a terrible neighborhood. I'm glad I don't live there.
Often called "drive by downloads". All browsers are vulnerable to these from time to time, even Firefox has had it's fair share of them, and increasing as more and more malware authors target Firefox due to it's increasing market share.
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On Linux, there is built-in protection against such craft. Newly deposited files from your email client or Web browser are not given execute privileges. Cleverly renaming executable files as something else doesn't matter, because Linux and its applications don't depend on file extensions to identify the properties of a file, so they won't mistakenly execute malware as they interact with it.
This is true, you have to explicitly allow the executable to run, however once you have convinced the user that the executable is worth running you can just include instructions on how to do this. Plenty of malware for Windows does this already, instructing the user to click through all the ActiveX warnings that pop up and ticking that they trust software from ScammersInc or whatever.
The main think that keeps Linux secure is the quality of it's users, not the quality of the OS.
Don't get me wrong. I like Linux and until very recently used it as my main OS (I have switched to Win7) but if Linux suddenly got the home user market share that Windows has, we'd see just as many exploits and malware as we do currently on Windows. But don't worry, Mac users are going to get a rude awakening on this issue long before Linux does.
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