Linux

In the past few years i read and heard many times that the reason for Windows' vulnerabilities and specially virus attacks is simply because much more computers are running it and it could have been the same for Linux (aka GNU/Linux)!.

First of all i'm glad that this kind of discussions are pupping up so often these days, because it means that Linux's user base is increasing and it attracts more attention everyday. However this point of view also shows its authors' limited understanding of how GNU/Linux and Open Source community work. GNU/Linux is NOT WINDOWS, yes they're both operating systems but they have many fundamental differences. Lets highlight some of these differences  and see how they affect the main topic of this article.

System partition (Where operating system is installed) is usually target for viruses, bad sectors, out of disk space (Which is quite common in Windows Vista and the next versions due to the winsxs folder's uncontrolled size increase) specially in Windows. You may need to re-install or even format your entire system partition, in situations like this the main problem is how to backup your data if your haven't lost it already!! Although it's possible but it's not easy, Unlike Linux , Windows does not have any official live CD so you would have to use command line or connect your disk to another system and wait until it backups your data and then you can start re-installing Windows, it's a very time consuming process and not every one has multiply OSs or PCs.

Using a different disk for users' data can also improve performance in Multi Tasking. Also If you're a Linux user there is another advantage. Using another partition for users's data allows trying other distributions - which is quite common among Linux users - without having to be worried about data loss.

It might sound strange at first but i must say that it's very useful specially if you have shell scripts as part of your application. Usually For making this scripts as automated as possible there should be a way to reuse the application's configurations (ips, passwords , etc) and not having to update a separate configuration file whenever anything changes in the application. It's not limited only to this and can be used to pass any kind of variables.