Edit: typo
most windows programs haven’t run as root in over a decade.
a program only runs as “root” in one of three situations:
There are still far too many system components which run with spooky elevated privileges. Don't believe me? Try nuking permissions on Windows update or activation nagware, disconnect from the internet and see how long those changes persist. Sometimes it is a few reboots.
This is a fundamentally insecure security framework, which no amount of glue or sandboxing can fix.
how would you expect something like windows update to function without elevated privileges?
activation nagware
what?
If Linux was the world’s most popular operating system, it too would have tons of vulnerabilities.
There’s two sides to that statement; one being that increased attention leads to more findings. The second being that in order to become popular, it would need a large set of simplified convenience features aimed for mass consumers; and those are often what lead to vulnerabilities. (Same story pretty much happened with Android)
What do you mean by “most Windows programs running as root?” I don’t think that’s accurate, unless you’ve disabled UAC.
OP still uses Windows XP.
Meanwhile, giving myself root access to my own computer is a bitch. I need to just switch to Linux
Windows Defender bad?
Pretty most of the people i know who work in IT are all just using Defender now, i have even stopped paying for AV and just use defender out of the box. Unless you are doing something that exposes you to risk there really is no use to use anything other than defender. In saying that enterprise or businesses environment i would still say 100% have something other than defender in place.
i'm one of those people. haven't used anything other than Windows Defender for over a decade at this point.
If you want to criticize windows for being shitty, you should have went with their certification system. You know that popup that shows up whenever you run an exe from an "unknown publisher"? Well viruses can (and do) get certification since all you have to do is send Macroshaft money, leaving you completely unprotected from actual threats. It's security theatre only there for fundraising purposes. Completely useless.
And no this isn't a case of "no oversight" there are cases where Windows Defender will let you run a program its own database knows is a virus. Even if they know your program is flat out malware, as long as you buy that certificate your program will forever be treated as legitimate.
You know what, if it keeps me from getting weird phone calls from my gramps once a month it's good enough.
Precisely because Windows has been the main target for hackers and malware, for being by far the most used OS, it has caused Windows today to be the best protected OS, with a Defender that is currently one of the best AVs on the market and a effective Sandbox system that prevents any changes without user intervention in the root system. Hopefully in terms of privacy it will be just as good, at least by default it is not like that.