• abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    No need to worry about viruses

    I’ve encountered viruses on Linux servers. It’s definitely something to worry about.

    Even if viruses do infect a Linux system, they would have little to no damage. By default, Linux systems run with restricted user permissions and access, which can still be even more hardened using SELinux and AppArmor to the point that each application can be isolated from one another. Making the infection spread impossible.

    True - those do help. By the way this is something MacOS does better at. For example the / filesystem is mounted read only. You literally can’t write to it at all (software updates get around this by creating a new snapshot of the disk, writing to that, and then rebooting telling the firmware to use the newly created snapshot… which it will only do after firmware level integrity checks against malware). Software, by default, has almost no access to the write to even parts of the disk that the user has access to. It also can’t access the internet or printers or bluetooth or cameras or any of that. Access to these things works much like a firewall - there’s a white list of things the software can get to. And even then, there are some things that still can’t be reached (for example your camera can only be accessed if the user grants permission).

    Safer files

    Eh. I don’t think Linux is any better than other operating systems at that.

    Compared to other operating systems, Linux is not resource-hungry. Meaning it used less RAM and CPU usage

    I disagree. MacOS is more efficient… a Mac with 8GB of RAM and a slow CPU is generally going to be better at every day tasks. Ever heard that Macs have incredible battery life? That’s because they’re efficient. I’m pretty sure the CPU in my laptop is technically capable of draining the battery in about 45 minutes, but in real world use I get about 18 hours of battery life out of it - because the software works really really hard to keep CPU idle. On slower hardware that translates to excellent performance.

    Sure - install the right software on a Linux system, it won’t need much in the way of resources… but on MacOS you can run modern state of the art software efficiently - a lot of that comes down to low level features like GCD and ARC. Both of which can be used on Linux (they’re open source) but in practice you won’t find any software that actually uses them. On MacOS pretty much everything uses them.

    Free to use; Flexibility

    100% agree. That’s where Linux really shines (I think you should have lead with those) and these are the two reasons I run either Linux and MacOS for 99% of my computing life. I even have Linux VMs running on my Macs most of the time. Use the best tool for the job (I even have a couple Windows PCs, though those are rarely used).

    • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      At this level, aren’t MacOS and Linux close siblings compared to Windows? They do share ancestry. Are we comparing mandarins and clementines, when pears exist.

    • sv1sjp@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I agree with your statements however Immutable Linux and flatpaks with SELinux are a thing nowadays.

    • GigglyBobble@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      a lot of that comes down to low level features like GCD and ARC.

      Ah, almost but this shows you’re just bullshitting (knowingly or not). Those are programming features and neither serves resource efficiency but security and preventing other errors. Important things, but managing memory manually in C will be faster and less resource-intensive than any smart-pointer variant. Doing so flawlessly is hard though.

    • msage@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      It could be because I’m a Gentoo user with DWM, but Mac has larger footprint than my Linux.