Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet)

Is Linux Desktop Better Than Windows? (LinuxPlanet)

"rebuild your hard drive"? LOL, on what planet? - more like: stop X, rm -rf the gnome related subdirs of your home dir, and start X again with virgin settings.

On this planet. For my sister, mother or father (who are not geeks like me) there are exactly zero difference between these two operations: in both cases you have documents left (you do keep "My Documents" folder when reinstalling Windows, right?) while most of configuration will be lost.

The same goes with "no root by default". For typical desktop user it's OS installation is valued as something like $20-$30 (he/she spent hour or two to install it and that's all value it's there) while it's ducuments are valued as something like $1000-$2000 (yes, there are backups but he/she spend weeks to tune it's desktop "just right" and some files are always not on backup, or not easy to pull out of backup - like bookmark list).

Now you come and say: "hey, Linux is so great - it'll be never brough down since there are this root/user separation". But this means this small $20-$30 of system will be secure while it's precisious desktop settings and wallpapers are in danger just as much! Do you see now why most geeks are not impressed? On single-user system 99% of things worth keeping are not protected by root/user separation, so forget about this argument when talking about desktop.

P.S. And do not start on "but programs will still be there and configuration will be intact!". It's totally wrong - either you'll run random installers of random stuff under root or you run them under normal users and in all cases separation does not work. For most users "test account" is too cumbersome to be really useful. So no, the sad truth is that on desktop there are surprisingly small difference between Windows's and Linux's security