New research suggests that Linux as a platform is more secure than Microsoft's Windows and Apple's macOS. Platform security is becoming a major concern among users, with Windows and macOS often believed to be relatively safer than Linux due to the regular security patches and updates. However, the latest report now suggests that Linux could actually be faster than both.
Security vulnerabilities in operating platforms and other software is a major problem, given the growing prevalence of malware. Not only that, targeted hackings are also becoming a major issue for government agencies, politicians, journalists, and civil rights activists. Regular citizens are also often being targeted by cyber-criminals, so it is imperative for software vendors to patch security vulnerabilities in their products as soon as possible.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
Related: Is Your Smartphone Hacked? Here's How To Tell
Over the years, the discovery of a host of vulnerabilities in Linux have led people to assume that it is inherently less safe than proprietary platforms, such as Windows and macOS. As it turns out, that may not be entirely true. According to new research by Google's Project Zero team, Linux developers do a faster job of fixing security bugs than anyone else. Interestingly, they apparently do a better job than even Google's own in-house teams that work on Chrome, Chrome OS and Android.
The Research Spanned Three Years
To study how fast various companies patched their security vulnerabilities, the researchers looked at fixed bugs that had been reported over a three-year period between January 2019 and December 2021. According to the results, open-source programmers, on average, fixed Linux issues in just 25 days. In comparison, Apple took about 69 days to fix security holes in macOS, while Microsoft took a whopping 83 days to patch security vulnerabilities in Windows. Meanwhile, Google and Mozilla fixed bugs in 44 days and 46 days, respectively. Oracle took the most time overall, taking an average of 109 days to fix each bug. Compared to the others, however, the Oracle data is based on a small sample size of just seven bugs.
The study also calculated the time taken by developers to fix security vulnerabilities in mobile operating systems. Here, the results were more along expected lines. According to the report, Apple managed to issue patches for iOS faster than Android vendors, despite receiving many more bug reports than any of the Android manufacturers. Overall, iOS received 76 bug reports and Apple fixed them in an average of 70 days. Samsung received 10 bug reports in the same time, while Google received 6, and both took an average of 72 days to fix the security flaws.
Whether it's a desktop or laptop computer, a smartphone or a video game system, every modern computer needs an operating system. That's the core software on the computer that sits between application software and the hardware, distributing memory and computing resources to apps, managing files and enforcing security rules.
Tip
Five of the most common operating systems are Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS, Linux, Android and Apple's iOS.
What Operating Systems Do
Operating systems define how a computer stores files, switches between different applications, manages memory, keeps itself secure, and interacts with peripherals like printers and cameras. Different operating systems take different approaches to all of these, which is why you normally can't run a Windows program on a Macintosh computer and why permissions look different on an Android phone than on an iPhone.
Some operating systems are designed by groups of people around the world, like the open source, freely available operating system Linux, while others are commercial products made by one company, such as Microsoft's Windows and Apple's macOS.
Different operating systems run on different types of hardware and are designed for different types of applications. For example, iOS is designed for iPhones and iPad tablets, while Mac desktops and laptops use macOS. Your computer or smartphone comes equipped with an OS, but you can install another one in some cases.
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows has existed in one form or another since 1985, and it remains the most popular operating system for home and office computers. Its latest versions, including Windows 10, are also used on some tablets, and the OS is used on some web and number-crunching server computers as well. Computers from a wide variety of manufacturers can use Windows.
Initial versions of Windows worked with an earlier Microsoft operating system called MS-DOS, providing a modern graphical interface on top of DOS's traditional text-based commands. Signature features of Microsoft Windows's user interface include windows themselves – rectangle-shaped, on-panel screens that represent individual applications. The Windows Start menu has helped generations of users find programs and files on their devices.
Efforts to use versions of the Windows OS for smartphones have been less successful.
Apple iOS
Apple's iOS is one of the most popular smartphone operating systems, second only to Android. It runs on Apple hardware, including iPhones, iPad tablets and iPod Touch media players.
Signature features of iOS include the App Store where users buy apps and download free software, an emphasis on security including strong encryption to limit what unauthorized users can extract from the phone, and a simple, streamlined interface with minimal hardware buttons.
Google's Android OS
Android is the most popular operating system in the world judging by the number of devices installed. Largely developed by Google, it's chiefly used on smartphones and tablets. Unlike iOS, it can be used on devices made by a variety of different manufacturers, and those makers can tweak parts of its interface to suit their own needs.
Users can download custom versions of the operating system because large portions of it are open source, meaning anyone can legally modify it and publish their own. However, most people prefer to stick with the version that comes on their devices.
Android, like iOS, comes with an application and media store called the Play Store built by Google. Some phone manufacturers and other organizations also offer their own stores to install software and media.
Apple macOS
Apple's macOS, successor to the popular OS X operating system, runs on Apple laptops and desktops. Based in part on the historic family of Unix operating systems dating back to research in the 1960s at AT&T's Bell Labs, macOS shares some features with other Unix-related operating systems including Linux. While the graphical interfaces are different, many of the underlying programming interfaces and command line features are the same.
Signature elements of macOS include the dock used to find programs and frequently used files, unique keyboard keys including the Command key, and the stoplight-colored buttons used to resize open program windows. MacOS is known for its user-friendly features, which include Siri, a natural-voice personal assistant, and FaceTime, Apple's video-calling application.
Linux Operating System
Unlike many other operating systems, development on Linux isn't led by any one company. The operating system was created by Finnish programmer Linus Torvalds in 1991. Nowadays, programmers from all over the world collaborate on its open source code and submit tweaks to the central kernel software and other programs.
A wide assortment of commercial and open source software is available for Linux, and various Linux distributions provide custom user interfaces and tools for installing software onto machines running the operating system. A favorite of many programmers, Linux is widely used on corporate and scientific servers, including cloud computing environments. Linux can be run on a wide variety of hardware and is available free of charge over the internet.