I'm not completely 'computer-literate,' if you will. I understand that they're Operating Systems out there like Windows, Linux, etc.
But my question is: Why so many against the Windows OS? I've never had problems with it.
Is the concern of security? Because I've heard of all the 'spyware' junk and viruses, etc.
I guess it's an old-age question, but I've never gotten a solid answer on this one.

Because all the security vulnerabilities happen behind your back without your knowledge. No one knows what's happening until it has already happened.

Here's another post of Microsoft's release of another patch recently:
http://www.trap17.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=28640&hl=

In other OS, things like these seldom happen. Users of other OS have peace of mind using their computer for personal or businesses.
You cannot afford to have errors, problems with the computer or the network in businesses. If security issn't tight in Windows, businesses will have problems running.
That's one reason why most internet servers are based on Linux and not Windows, because they cannot afford to have the network going down.

I have used all the different versions of windows as they have come along and i would say that they have all been mainly ok with just a few minor niggles.

The problem with windows though is that it has to be able to cope with all different kinds of hardware to configure and then mix that with all the different software programs that people want to run.

A major issue is that the majority of people who use computers have little or no understanding of how the computer / operating system works .... they just want to turn it on and for it to do what they need.

Then you have the problem of virus's , popups , spam , etc that are written by hackers using windows coding vulnerabilities. If windows wasnt such a popular operating system then the hackers wouldnt waste their time looking for these vulnerabilities.

People using linux are in the minority and probably expect to have problems as they havent had to pay for the operating system software.

the only reason people are so against it is that it's the most popular. I mean if the mac os was as popular i'm sure there would as many viruses and security vulnerabilities as the windows os.round

Hey,

Thanks you guys for your input. I haven noticed that a lot of Web hosts run off Linux servers rather than any other.

Trap17 Also runs on linux. On Unix(-like), you have to be root to destroy a system. There are holes which you can exploit, but those are consistenly fixed but when the hole is fixed new holes are discovered and the process of patching will never end.
But when you are root, you have to be careful. Many linux distro consider creating a user without root privileges is a MUST. The deadliest command on the is the infamouse rm -rf /. Mac OSX is based on BSD-unix(Darwin) and it has root disable by default. On windows, microsoft does the opposite. The first user created(without a password!) has the administrator right by default and cannot be changed without the registry hack to display administrator user.
You can see now why microsoft has given up some security for conveniency

I must say I'm an anti-M$ and I sometime overcoment on something so don't take this too seriously.

Windows is pretty much an OS begging to be killed. And it's very unsecure, along with everything is done without your knowledge. Your pc could be running a hundred scripts and programs and you wouldn't know. In *nix systems, you control what's running. I prefer the *nix systems over windows for control, not so much as security.

Where I work, our network computers all run Windows 2000, apart from one, which runs Linux.
The other week, we got hit with a very nasty Virus, and after a few days trying to fix the problem, it had spread to every PC, apart from the Linux one. In the end it resulted in all 20 Windows PC's being formatted, with only the linux one remaining fine.

Thats the main difference.

Just because your running a Linux or Mac dosen't mean your invulnerable to Viruses and Hacks. My friend was running on a Linux OS and his system became a victim of a virus.

He now runs Win XP instead because he thought that Linux would be near invincible against Viruses but he was wrong. He also changed because of the large amount of programs that built for Windows Only.