>>13436497It's open source nature allows for all the code to be thoroughly audited. Windows is closed-source. Only Microsoft truly knows it's inner-workings, and they have to spend a lot of time patching vulnerabilities. All the while, Windows gets more bloated and labyrinthine, making it require a lot and be exposed to a lot of vulnerabilities to do relatively little, like run office software, send e-mails, or use a web browser.
There have been partial leaks of the source code up to Win XP/2003. Some /g/ anons successfully compiled it. It is technically illegal for anyone to own or tamper with, which takes it out of the hands of ethical people and leaves it entirely in the hands of the unethical that could study it's source code and use it to launch a number of significant attacks on the OS. WinXP is 20 years old, sure, but most of the NT kernel hasn't been touched since Windows 2000.
Some Linux distros are geared towards stability and hardened protocols (Debian, Fedora). Others are geared towards more bleeding edge software (Arch).
Some are made to be easy and accessible for getting away from Windows, like Ubuntu (based on Debian) and Mint.
Some are made to be compiled bespoke for the computer you're running it on, like Void or Gentoo.
If you have older hardware or simply want more performance out of what you have, you can usually get much better results using a Linux distro.
I quite like Debian because it's been around since 1993 and it is versatile. It runs well on old and new computers. Many distros are based around it and it's package manager, so it's a nice middle ground between something very easy like Ubuntu, and very technical like Gentoo.
