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Comment by didntlogin | Hacker News Reader

The Android app store?

More like android f-droid store.

Its mostly a windows problem. I haven't seen malware from .debian.org or more recently .freebsd.org.

That's due to the much smaller install base. As soon as you get any commercial software on linux, you break outside the package manager and start getting closer to crapware (see graphics drivers installation process which is normally 'download this shell file and execute it as root').

At that level (you're using linux, know what 'root' is, how to access root and how to execute a shell file as root) you're being lazy if something like that bites you in the ass.

Also its possible to screw up a system that way, but its easier / lazier to just install the wrapper package that takes care of everything including dependencies.

So on freebsd, pkg install nvidia-driver, or on legacy linux apt-get install nvidia-driver and you're all done.

Someone looking for trouble could do it the hard and dangerous way, but why?

Also commercial software other than possibly games, is dead man walking and is dead on FOSS platforms. Sure, go ahead, pretend its the 80s and try to charge me money for an editor, or a compiler, or pretend its the 90s and try to charge me for a web browser or a database, its just not happening.

... and try to charge me money for an editor ...

OK, make an editor that great as Sublime Text, put a msgbox that I really should pay $60 for multi-PC license, and be done with it.

freebsd or "legacy linux" "commercial software ... is dead man walking"

</troll>

Which leads us back to the real reason why you don't get malware on Linux - because non-tech-savvy people don't use it. If ever, say, Ubuntu reaches popularity levels comparable to Windows among general population, you'll be seeing tons of toolbars there as well.

well actually Ubuntu bundled spyware

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do

    Ubuntu uses the information about searches
    to show the user ads to buy various things
    from Amazon. Amazon commits many wrongs
    (see http://stallman.org/amazon.html); by
    promoting Amazon, Canonical contributes to
    them. However, the ads are not the core of
    the problem. The main issue is the spying.
    Canonical says it does not tell Amazon who
    searched for what. However, it is just as 
    bad for Canonical to collect your personal 
    information as it would have been for Amazon 
    to collect it.

More info, plus a script to fix:

https://fixubuntu.com/

> you're being lazy if something like that bites you in the ass.

I mean maybe—it's not like you have the option to analyze or debug what you're running. You can't predict everything that can go wrong, even if you know the rest of your system top to bottom.

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