While you have a point, I'd like to point out a couple things.

First of all, with Linux you have a certain amount of control over your security that's lacking for Windows. Think one of the daemons that comes with your distribution is insecure? Replace it with a different version. Don't want file sharing attacks? Don't run Samba. Worried about email reader exploits? Use a text-based reader.

You can also examine the source of a security patch and see *exactly* what it's doing -- so you don't get surprised, as IE users recently were, by the fact that a patch doesn't fix everything it's supposed to. Companies *know* you can do this, and generally are very open about what's being fixed and what isn't.

Secondly, your argument about third-party apps actually cuts the other way. A lot of functionality that you need to buy third-party software for on a Microsoft OS comes bundled with most Linux distributions. The result is that an exploit for one of those third-party apps on t

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