this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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True story, Linux sees MIME types, so if Hot.Chick.Blows.Brother.mp4 is a virus, it shows up with a Windows (MZ) binary icon, not a media icon ๐... unlike Windows which only recognizes extensions ๐.
That's not a Linux thing. It's just whatever desktop shell you chose to use and various shells behave in various ways. The reason this might be safer in most Linux distros is that you're discouraged from executing things under a privileged user which means that malware can't make significant changest to your system easily. If you do the same in windows, you'd be just as safe.
Not exactly... I mean, yes, you're right about the privileges thing, but Windows has a lot more security holes than Linux (or any POSIX based OS for that matter). The root of the problem, as always is the distant Windows relative, DOS... no user space notion whatsoever... and Windows NT has dragged these issues for decades now, all because MS made (bought) DOS and distributed it.
Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, also decided that file extensions should be hidden by default. So you won't even see that you downloaded TaylorSwift_1989_TaylorsVersion.exe instead of TaylorSwift_1989_TaylorsVersion.mp3 unless you changed that setting ahead of time.