I don't understand what you're trying to say here. I've never run MS-Windows or any Mac software, but I hear MS-Win users always talking about viruses and running scanners and such - I've seen them waiting for the scan to finish. Whether or not they're justified in this activity, I don't know.

I've run Linux for years and have never seen any exploits and I do nothing special. Thats reality and not speculation. I also keep at least one DOS box on the network 24/7 and in 20 years I've not had any exploits or viruses or whatever you call them on there either. I do believe that reality beats speculation when it comes to worrying about things like that.

It isn't about amount of exploits. It isn't about how secure a system is by design. It isn't about the problems when you need security but you have a large company. Where the security also speaks about who can read what, who can write to which file, and the permissions are more complex than what our 2 ids and 3 digits structure would suggest and how easy it is to set up permissions this way, and use this in normal work can influence how secure everything will be.

Such things won't change how often you will have to deal with viruses. Why? Because only one thing matters: How easy it is to find a system that will run your malicious code.

When you try to infect desktop PCs one kind of user is the target: who allows everything when the browser asks for permissions, who opens links to sex videos involving Angelina Jolie and a horse, who opens executable attachments that promise te same thing as a screen saver, who are stupid and don't consider which os they should use. They don't update (too afraid of any changes), etc. so their computer is pretty vulnerable.

Majority of these users use Windows, followed by Mac OS X... linux isn't that common for these people, since they get windows with their PC, that is the first OS they seen and besides linux is scary. Ohh, and they don't even know anything about FreeBSD.

You want to hack web servers? The easiest target is LAMP. Yes, Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. Why? Because most people who don't know what they do will use such servers as their web server, and they won't even try to secure / update their open source web apps.

Guitar Pro.

I have it running under Wine but it's just not as good as the Windoze original. As for Tuxguitar it's good but I still can't print from it.

That doesn't make any sense to me. My DOS kernel is MS which is the most common of the major ones and this "current" version is from 1993. I've been running it since then and yes, it's on the net. For practical and real world reasons I don't generally update my Linux systems either. I do think that updating is, in itself, the major vulnerability and it is the "updaters" who have vulnerabilities. (I don't know about MS-Windows systems but understand they have their own special problems.) Based on past experience, I don't expect problems in the future. There's a lot of theory and paranoia floating about out there. I don't go for it, put my trust in what I can actually see, and believe it is wiser to go with what works. This argument probably will divide along generational lines. I agree that web servers present another problem but note that very, very, few people put servers on the net or could even begin to guess what LAMP means.

I do hope you at least patch your networking stack, media players/handlers, mail clients and web browsers then, or have a very expensive and powerful highly restrictive security scanner gateway sitting between your clients and the Internet. Because it's awfully easy to attack these seemingly innocent pieces of software in the course of what you may believe are 'safe' activities. Just lagging behind on Firefox (and add-on, if you're a NoScript user) patches leaves you wide open to XSS attacks you'll never notice till you've been robbed clean
That includes patching your router. Really, i'm not kidding.

Among the 'very, very few' people are many of the people rummaging through this forum on a daily basis.. some never realise, that their media player of choice is also a browser, database and server rolled into one. Such is the world of progress, simplicity on a desktop is fading out of existance i'm afraid.

I think their "security" depends on a simple fact: There is not enough people who do the same. As soon as linux will have more than 10% market share on desktop markets these people will be an attractive target and we will hear about tons of unhappy users.

virtual DJ

http://www.virtualdj.com/

MP 3 mixing software

This is entirely off topic (and "general" [aka vague] security related debates are pointless and unproductive - this domain should be left to experts, everyone else should just adhere to well-known generally accepted practices).

What about: Adobe CS4 -pack?
Or did anyone ask it?

We run suse and debian on amd 64 and love them

well, you can use / replacing:
cinepaint (maybe gimp) / for photoshop - fireworks (check plugins)
nvu, kompozer and open office / for dreamweaver
xara extreme (maybe skencil) / for indesign
kino, lives and stopmotion / for premiere
scribus / for illustrator
ipe, flpsed and pdfedit / for distiller - acrobat
cvs / for version cue
F4L, adobe flex framework and flash / for flash
Pixelmateor and After effects (maybe jahshaka) / for After effects
Ardour and Audacity / for Soundbooth (but here you should use a mac)

apparently they are working at cs4:
http://www.linuxinsider.com/story/63...wlc=1241429379

I would definitely like to see Adobe products in general to be ported but specifically Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, and InDesign. Paying for them is definitely worth it.

whitemice: except for the fact that security was used as a main point here to promote linux, and its security is pretty relative... and it also points out to a simple fact: while linux desktop security mostly depends on lack of attackers who target multiple systems not lack of security holes, it would be important to see some security related tools to linux. Also it points to a simple fact: Porting a tool once isn't enough, programs should be patched and upgraded.

dibi58: I doubt if Xara Extreme can replace InDesign, you probably doesn't know these software. GIMP / cinepaint aren't a good replacement for Photoshop in many cases. These tools aren't work as a single suite, you don't see any intergation to help you with your work.

What security related tools aren't ported to linux?

I would like to see Clonespy ported to Linux. It's already free for windoze users and is a really neat tool. It compares specified folders and checks for duplicates using a variety of algorithms. The files may be older or renamed and it will still find duplicates by content. After recovering a windoze hard drive that lost it's fat table, the results came back without the original directory structure and with files grouped together in directories with hexadecimal names and no recognisable order.
Clonespy allowed me to reduce the massive amount of work involved in comparing to backed up files.
The older versions have a "Chicken Delete" function which allows the files removed to be placed in a special location with the path structure intact.
It's worth running windoze to watch the program work.