thanks for the reply- in your opinion, do you think linux is still more secure online than windows as far as viruses go? I know it will be just an opinion- but you know more about this stuff than i do - I was under hte impression that browsing net with linux was mostly pretty safe? Which was a big reason why i switched to linux as my main online os
Linux is a more secure operating system than Windows. Does that make it safer for web browsing than Windows? It depends at least as much on the browser, and your settings, these days. In very general terms, privacy-oriented browsers (like Brave and Firefox) are at least as important to web surfing safety as which OS they’re running on.
That said, I believe that Linux is less likely to get malware, if only because more malware is written to take advantage of Windows flaws than Linux flaws.
Personally I don’t use Windows or Windows-based browsers like IE for web browsing. I use Brave or Firefox on either MacOS or Linux, and consider those combinations roughly equivalent in safety. I use Windows to run Windows-only programs, and none of the programs I run require that I be surfing the web too.