I have been computer free for probably 15ish years until I recently bought and set up a RPi4 with Linux. It’s been fun but I’m not really a super user so I’m looking to back to Windows as my main OS.

  1. is antivirus a necessity? I will be gaming and streaming on my new setup.

If yes then

  1. what are some ideal options? Paid or free.

Thanks for your responses in advance.

  • @[email protected]English
    16•10 months ago

    Generally speaking, in reverse order of strength of argument:

    • Linux is built a little more securely. There’s a ton of caveats here but it is generally harder to privilege escalate. (inb4 someone sends me a list of escalation attacks)
    • The user base is generally more security conscious (i.e. doesn’t just run random executables)
    • Doesn’t have the same attack surface (like default exploitable services)
    • The ecosystem isn’t a monoculture so it’s harder to build one-size-fits-all malware
    • The market share is so low that it’s rarely ever a target of malware

    Mostly it just doesn’t make sense for attackers looking for low hanging fruit to attack Linux machines.

    • @uranibaba
      6•10 months ago

      The last point is probably biggest point today. A hacker wants your money, and you as an individual do not have that much money. A company on the other hand, they can pay up big.

      Since a lot of companies use Windows, they target that, because that is where the money is.

    • @agent_flounderEnglish
      2•10 months ago

      I think it is more about market share than anything. Viruses targeting the end user are, I think, fairly uncommon. But I don’t think remote and local exploits are particularly rare since Linux has massive server market share. I don’t have stats handy so maybe I’m full of it, idk.

      I don’t think Windows has much in the way of default exploitable services anymore. Neither does Linux. I mean back around 2000 it was kind of a nightmare on both platforms. But default configs have gotten pretty good in 20+ years.

      I’m not aware of a whole lot preventing various local privilege escalation attacks on Linux but maybe there have been developments in the last several years that I’m not aware of?

      I know Windows 10 implements some additional memory protections for the LSA subsystem process to address Pass-The-Hash attacks.

      Linux still has setuid/setgid executables as one vector. But I would imagine various forms of kernel exploits are more or less similar to both.