Vista more secure than Linux, Apple OSX, and Windows XP

Jeff Jones, Director of Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, has released a very detailed report comparing the vulnerabilities reported and fixed, in the first 6 months after release, of each of the major operating systems. Vista is the most secure operating system ever released.

Microsoft took a lot of heat for delaying release of the Vista operating system, but it has paid off in terms of security and defending against hacker vulnerability.

Vista is more secure than Red Hat Linux, Apple OSX, and even Windows XP. The Linux and Apple fans will be sure to rant and object, but not with facts, just opinions. This report is very detailed, includes actual reported facts, and even strips out some bugs associated with Linux add-on software, so there is a fair "apples to apples" comparison. The report is fair and comprehensive.

Vista is more secure than Windows XP. That is the real measure of success. Linux and Apple OSX do not have much market share, so they don't attract hackers as much. Vista is attacked by all the worlds hackers because it is the biggest target. Given that exposure it is even more impressive that Vista is the most secure.

The Linux and Apple OSX fans will never be convinced, so it is irrelevant to them. It is however, nice to see a report based in facts, rather than the fanatical and biased opinions we often hear from the Linux crowd. One bright spot, Jeremy's Blog, a blog written by a Linux and Open Source evangelist, says;

This report indeed does a better job than some from a methodology standpoint. For instance, he didn’t simply compare a default RHEL install, which includes a full Office suite and a whole host of apps not found in a default Windows install, with a default Windows install. He attempted to rip out the packages from the Linux installs that he perceived as being extra functionality when compared to a Windows install. This gives a much better baseline.

Flame wars are likely to erupt, but to be fair, demand equal attention to detail and supporting facts, and ignore the fanatical opinions.

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Comments

[Lloyd Budd]

It is absurd not to think that the only "apples to apples" (pun intended) comparison is Windows Vista to previous versions of Windows because of the proprietary nature of the Windows code. And in that context the security results for Vista are fantastic!

Like three months, six months is not a meaningful quantity of time to consider the results anything, but hopeful.

If it was, I could argue that at three months, the lack of fixes was a horrible indicator.

(It is a shame that the numbers are not included in the reports as an appendix in spreadsheet form.)

At six months, I could argue that the vulnerabilities being reported is accelerated whereas for the Linux distributions researched it is decelerated.

Jeff Jones can claim that "Windows get a higher level of researcher scrutiny than other OSes", but there is an important context to this that he and you forgot to include. Proprietary software is much, much harder to scrutinize.

This difficulty means it takes longer for the"good guys" to scrutinize it and when the "bad guys" find something they have no interest in reporting the vulnerabilities back to Microsoft.

The expected trend at this time in the products life cycle is for the vulnerabilities in Windows to accelerate for this reason as the information slowly gets back to Microsoft. The opposite trend is often seen in open source software.

The other expected trend is for more severe vulnerabilities to be discovered later in the Windows product life cycle.

As you know, customers are less likely to install later service packs, so the delayed reporting and correcting has extreme consequences.

The fact is the result of proprietary code is more vulnerable computers, and more of your invaluable data at risk.

[Steve Severance]

Everyone in open source who wants to make the many eyes claim should remember the vulnerability in the MIT Kerbose code.

Steve

[linux photoshop]

Vista is better than Linux because of the bugs fixed in the earlier windows operating systems that make it better than before, Linux on the other hand is stable rather than windows XP and lower versions.