Many a windows user has entered the Linux fold after a host of bad experiences with malware in the Windows world ---viruses, and all sorts of other malicious bits of software code, too numerous to imagine. Windows is also plagued by a seemingly endless array of security vulnerabilities, leaving the system easy prey to invaders with less than nobile intentions. Every trip out into cyberspace thuse becomes something like a run through the infectious ward of a hospital. For a Windows user, it can sometimes seem that more time is spent ridding the system of viral pests and defending it from invaders that is actually spent getting things done.