Security: Is XP With Protection as Secure as Linux Mint?

I have been using a variety of security software for a few years now.

I just built a new XP machine which I made dual-boot with Linux Mint Helena and Windows XP. I thought when I built it I would use Linux most of the time, but I find myself using XP because I'm so comfortable with the protection I have on it. My XP protections are as follows:

1. Hardware firewall
2. DefenseWall Firewall
3. Panda Cloud Anti-Virus
4. MalWareBytes Antimalware (sometimes realtime and always on demand scanning)
4. Sandboxie for Firefox 3.6 with with WOT, NoScript,and KeyScrambler
5. KeePass (and Roboform) for my password
6. Separate sandbox for any financial transactions.

All of the above works well together and I feel very well protected.


With Linux Mint, I turned on the firewall, Otherwise my only protection is that malware writers spend almost all of their time exploiting Windows XP.

Am I better protected with the Windows XP setup or Linux Mint? I definitely feel more protected in XP.

 

Well, you've got a small army of anti-malware products to protect XP, so you're maybe, maybe not better protected with it than Mint, but at an expense of system resources. IMO, you could surf worry-free in Mint and enjoy a snappier, more responsive system.

 

Not really a "small army of anti-malware products", I use a similar config, and in my experience not much of a resource hit.

Hardware firewall would be applicable to any OS you were running.
I use MalWareBytes Antimalware strictly on-demand when I am installing a new program.
I use Avira free and I have never noticed any resource hit (must be some, but it is not noticeable.)
Sandboxie is excellent and again, I cannot see any resouce slowdown.
If I do move to Linux, I will most definitely continue using Keepass.

I am also concerned about security in Linux ( and Mint is one of my favorites); the assurance from Linux enthusiasts that Linux is secure..."trust me", leaves me concerned. At least with Windows, I can employ a number of programs and resources to easily check for malware and block or allow programs as I wish. Probably also possible with Linux, but not much info in this area; the usual comment is "Linux is safe"...because everyone says it is.

 

There is no "trust me" here. People like myself have provided a number of reasons for the increased security of the Unix based systems over and over again.

The problem I see is that many Windows users are simply from a different world and aren't familiar with the way Unix does things and they just don't "get it" when it comes to Unix security. The Windows mindset is that M$ provides no security at all, so the user must spend lots of money and/or download lots of add-on software to do the job that M$ didn't do. To a Windows user, security is AV software or one of the gazillion firewalls. It doesn't work that way in Linux (there is only one firewall) or any other Unix-like system. Things are much more integrated.

Is it possible to have a pretty air tight Windows box? Sure. But the same can be done on Linux with much less work.

 

Thank you all for your input.

Because the responses, to what I thought was a controversial question, were somewhat slow I have posted this question on the Unix thread.

Please consider this thread closed.

Again, thanks for the input.