Linux is, in simplest terms, an operating system. It is the software on a computer that enables applications and the computer operator to access the devices on the computer to perform desired functions.
This is plain wrong. I mean, yes, if somebody says "I run linux" it's clear they mean that they run an Operating System that uses the Linux kernel, but Linus didn't make XFCE/Gnome/etc; just the kernel. Although I think calling it "GNU/Linux" would be equally stupid because not all free software used on Linux systems are GNU. Linux is the Kernel; the rest is other free software; for example, the desktop environments aren't "linux"; for the most part they work equally well on other kernels.
Therefore it can not have a virus.
here's an idea, stop making stupid assertions and or drawing out arguments I never made to argue against. I never said Linux-based systems c ouldn't have a virus. Of course they can. *censored*, if you ask me they are more susceptible than windows, merely because of the fact that there are so many different people working on various Open Source projects and they aren't all necessarily audited properly for things like buffer overflows which can easily allow any user to simply become the root user with a single command. Of course, the thing is, the problem in that case has absolutely nothing to do with Linux based Operating systems and everything to do with the fact that C is for some reason still a preferred language, despite the fact that it practically works against the creation of "secure" code. ("secure" in the context of exploitation).
In any case,No operating System is immune from viruses. a virus is pretty much just a program that attempts to promulgate itself through either the network (worm) or by copying itself into memory and then copying itself to removable media and then infecting other machines through that media.
Two things prevent virus makers from bothering with either a Linux or even in many cases a Mac virus:
-the vast majority of computer users run Windows. Fact.
-most Linux users are more computer savvy then the average user.
So if you had to choose from developing a piece of malware that could run on hundreds of millions of machines of which a large majority were technical sycophants who will believe any messages you put up claiming to be "from the system", or a few hundred thousand machines whose users were smart enough to know you and anyone who looks like you were a scumbag, which would you choose? It's pretty obvious.
And if you've ever had to use XCode you know why nobody bothers to write Mac viruses. *censored* I'm convinced the vast majority of people who use xcode only do so because they are paid, likely by companies trying to get some offshoot application on the app store. I used it once and it was like I went through a time warp where compiler and IDE technology had regressed to the state of Turbo Pascal 2.
