For people speaking german:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url=/newsticker/meldung/57753

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url=/newsticker/meldung/58038

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url=/newsticker/meldung/57963

no comments on these ones from my side, the articles say it all. i just posted 'em 'cause some one in here wouldn't believe me when i would give these facts on my own. search on the net for linux problems; there are not less necessary results than for windows. i bet the linux problems are even more critical. now i'm curious about falconfly's answer

Comparing Windows with Linux is similar comparing InternetExplorer and Firefox. Both have security issues but but if you look at them closely you see that it requires much, somtimes strange, userinteraction in Firefox to infect your PC with Viruses or Spyware and now look how many holes there are in InternetExplorer that install such malware without any userinteraction. Look here http://www.heise.de/security/dienste/browsercheck/demos/nc/ and http://www.heise.de/security/dienste/browsercheck/demos/ie/

And many linux security issues "those" websites mention are not linux but application issues like apache, wuftp etc. So now add all the IIS, apache (yes many windows server also run apache) issues to the windows flaws and count again!

Regards,
Andreas

P.S.
Linux is hyped, Linux is in, but is only a Kernel. If you don't want the Linux bugs in your Gnu/Linux system use Gnu/BSD. How many security issues had the BSD Kernel in the last 7 Years? 1? And DieHard Unixers use Gnu/Hurd with Mach Kernel

It took me a while, but I've found references to the only Linux Viruses to ever exist (although none of them never spreaded outside of AntiVirus testing laboratories) *g*

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/10/06/linux_vs_windows_viruses/

Shall I post the current Windows Virus, Worms, Trojan and Exploit Lists for a quick comparison?

PS.
HTML volunerabilities were, and some of them still are a widespread risk for IE Users.
The last gotcha for Windows Users was found on EBay, where the HTML Page from an Auction could simply launch the MS Office assistant (if installed) and make it read the Auction text + make it jump over the Screen *lol*

For the unaware, this was just an annoyance; for the security-aware : nothing but a full-blown catastophy

Here's some quick read concerning IE6 bugs alone :
http://secunia.com/product/11/#advisories

20 of 79 (!) are unpatched to date...
Happy browsing I'd say, now that's what Windows Users consider "safe" nowadays... (?)

Your Links are very recent and I'm more than confident they will be fixed by the end if this month, IF they are confirmed to be exploitable outside laboratory conditions.

And I'd bet my sweet arse, that at the same time more than 80% of the unpatched Security Risks found in the IE will still be present next month.
---------
Face it son, you're fighting an entirely hopeless battle.
No matter how many Security issues you could ever find for Linux, I can point you to 10x the amount of issues on Windows for every bug you find in Linux security any day.

And Linux isn't a hype, it's plain reality.
One has to know its stenghts and weaknesses in order to effectively use it in the right places, that's all there is to it.

Tell me one linux-user who lends cds from a shady origin.

Of course there are security holes in linux, I assert you can't build a computer OS without any security issue but linux-issues are more theoretical because most virus-writers want to do as many harm as possible and that's only possible when they write viruses/worms for windows-based systems. If linux would be more common there would be more viruses for linux but because linux is so uncommon you won't find many linux-viruses.

P.S.: what do you want to say with these three articles? That everybody who uses linux should change to windows because windows is safer? Sorry but that's a daydream.

First two additions to my first post. First i read heise newsticker every day and from my point of view linux is really a bit hyped. No week without one company announces to use linux in their internal-edv-infrastructure and an other that announces that their professional-multiuser-migrating-network-rdbms is ported to run under linux. This may have values for those i-brouht-my-money-to-austria-on-31st-march businessman. For us gamers Linux will only be interesting when at least half of the games reviewd in a typical papergamemag run native under linux. The only exception at the moment are dedicated multiplayer game servers. You will see that nearly every popular Multiplayer-Shooter has linux dedicated server executables. The reason is that Linux is more safe for this task. Not to speak from TCP/IP performance!

Second is that Linux & Firefox are open source and everyone can search the code for bugs. This is the reason that those absolute exotic flaws in Firefox that require much user intervention have been found. Bugs and security issues can much easier be found if you read good structured documented source code than hacking a plain binary. Respect to those Windows hackers!

Regards,
Andreas

P.S.
Maybe i am wrong but this is my personal experience. I used Linux (slackware: yes, i know what i am doing and i VI rc scripts and config files by hand like every true unixer) from 1996 till end of 2001. I never had to care about security in all that time. In think the thousands of program packages big distributions that came with the ambition of linux distributors to conquer the desktop with all that multimedia stuff brought most of the security issues. I more often read about securty issues in ImageMagic, Mplayer and KDE than in the Kernel. But that's the same for Windows. Windows is already full of security holes and now you have to take care about Winamp, Realplayer, and even online multiplayer games can infect your PC!

@ eye-q: just wanted to show some examples so that everybody can see there's also problems on linux..i don't know who on the board uses it or how experienced users herein are, so i placed the links.

@ falconfly: i never said windows is more safe than linux. if that's incorrect please quote me there! maybe you didn't get the point of this discussion...what's the use of linux for gamers (this is a gamer's forum, isn't it?) & why should a windows user switch when there are serious problems in linux as well? tell me..sorry about wasting your valuable time again