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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> Does no one remember the complete nightmare that was going to a relative's house and realizing they hadn't updating Windows in 1 year? From bot nets to hidden folders full of pirated files (or worse...), and an overall general expectation that all banking credentials ever entered on that machine are compromised.

When I go to my relatives for which i have installed a version of Linux, even though they don't update it very often it is never infected with anything. No malware, no virus, nothing. Always working exactly as I left it. That's one less headache when I deal with family members.

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> When I go to my relatives for which i have installed a version of Linux, even though they don't update it very often it is never infected with anything. No malware, no virus, nothing. Always working exactly as I left it.

If enough people do this for their family members, when the Linux malware comes, it will sweep like a wildfire on dry wood. A complacent attitude, being trained not to worry about updates or malware is likely setting people for a very unpleasant surprise down the road.

Potentially. But the surface attack on UNIX-like systems is not the same as on Windows anyway.

I’m not so sure. Most malware I find on friend/family windows computers is installed by the user, and Linux gives you a lot more rope... At least windows has defender. The reason Linux systems that are given to family members don’t generally get malware is because those family members lack the technical ability to successfully install any new software on the machine.

unattended-upgrades in a cron-job isn't a terrible situation, particularly if you setup livepatch so you ~never have to reboot.

Please tell me livepatch actually works such that reboots can be avoided ... Ubuntu 18.04

You have to sign up for an account with canonical but it’s free for noncommercial use; it patches the running kernel.

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