Considering switching to linux
 

I am considering switching to linux from windows, but am unsure if it will be the right thing for me to do. I am quite skilled with windows but am a little put off from the proprietary stance they have and some of the ethical questions and other things that have been raised, so i am hoping for some advice.

I do not use my computer for anything too complex, internet, music some games and also wp. Is linux easy to make secure? Is it possible to get hacked, or should i say is it as easy to get hacked as a windows box because of all the exploits? I hope these questions are not too newbish and someone can offer me an educated opinion.

Linux can be easy or hard to secure, depending on exactly how secure you want it, and how you want to go about securing it. I'd reccommend reading some docs on linux security; Insecure.org has a few.

First off: there's a learning curve if you've never used *nix. It's a different environment. Get ready to read a lot.

For using just internet/music/office, it is very easy in linux, but games, however, are a sad situation in linux. there are some alternatives, but nothing is easier than running intensive PC games in windows.

Security:
Full-blown, hack-proof systems are very difficult to maintain. In any environment security is a cutting-edge arena. To stay on the forefront requires constant attention, no matter what your environment. One difference between Linux and Windows, however is that Windows relies on MS to release patches, while the Open Source Community is just that -- a community.

There are a lot of alternatives, and a lot of ways to accomplish things in Linux. I find it to be a good alternative to windows, except for some applications -- personally i prefer to do graphics development in MS, and gameing. Otherwise, i prefer linux.

It all comes down to preference.

You should be able to do most things on Linux, although games lags behind somewhat.
These days most distros install in a relatively secure fashion ie they tend to have services turned off rather than on by default.
I believe there are very few Linux viruses in the wild at the moment, although you can get Linux anti-virus sw : http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.p...e.txt?rev=HEAD
Also, the mail clients do not automatically run attachments, you would have to extract it, then make it executable, then run it...
This is a link to good info and a security-hardening script you can run: http://www.bastille-linux.org/
See also the Security forum here which has loads of info/links.
Welcome to LQ :)
We're here to help....

Security in Linux versus Windows is an open (and somewhat one-sided) debate.

It's safe to say that if you install an up-to-date version of Linux, and make sure that you install all available security patches, then you are at least as secure as a Windows user running a similar sort of system who does the same. Linux is also slightly more secure in that it is currently less of a target; there are more Windows machines to break into around the world, often without system updates applied.

You also have the option of turning off any services that you're not actually using; this does need a certain level of knowledge insofar as you need to know what a service does in order to work out if you need it, but you can't be exploited through vunrabilities in a given piece of software if it isn't running.

I should note that Linux hardware support tends to be very good, except in the case of propriatory devices. In particular, you should check to see if your computer's modem, graphics card and sound card are supported by the distro you're installing to avoid problems later.

Does wp stand for Word Processing? As far as that goes, I'd look at OpenOffice.org (similar to Microsoft Word, StarOffice etc.) and LaTeX (which isn't a WYSIWYG but tends to give much more professional results).

Also, you need to choose a distro. For a newbie, I'd recommend something with an emphasis on usability like Mandrake or SuSE rather than a lower-level, more powerful config system like Red Hat or Fedora.