Is Linux more secure than windows?

The answer to - Is Linux more secure than Windows is that Linux isn't really more secure than Windows. It's really more a matter of scope than anything. No matter what malware, exploits, and bad users exist EVERYWHERE. One being more secure than the other is nothing more than anecdotal evidence.

Malware exists for *nix, Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, Symbian, Xbox(yes), hard drives, and bios. No operating system is more secure than any other, the difference is in the number of attacks and scope of attacks. As a point you should look at the number of viruses for Linux and for Windows. You'll see a trend in that Windows has FAR more viruses for it than Linux does and that's purely because it's more lucrative to hack for Windows since you have a greater chance of getting the thing you want. For all we know there might be a critical flaw in Linux that would open the world to pain if discovered. It hasn't been yet, but it could be there.

Really however OS security comes down to usage, habits, behaviour, and users just as much as it does software, hardware, security, and passwords. Your computer can be safe in an infected network as long as you do the following:

Constantly ask yourself "How do I keep MY computer safe?"] Really all you can ever do is work to keep your computer safe. That includes most notably safe computing habits. You could run for years without anti virus* and never get a virus as long as you're safe and you keep your computer safe. I'd still run an anti virus though since you could be safe all you want and make a single mistake.

After all those big data breaches you often hear about aren't usually on computers, but servers running special software, and it's the software itself that gets attacked and exploited to extract the data. What this means is that your computer is as safe as you make it. They didn't make theirs very safe. Of course even if you make that software as secure as possible, it's all meaningless if someone manages to steal your credentials. In most data breaches an administrator gets phished, and their credentials are used to log in and steal the data. Here you can see that it didn't matter that the computer was safe since the user was attacked.

This really shows that there are two parts to security: The security of others (never trusted) and the security of yourself (only as good as you make it). To that end we all just try to make sure that the security of ourselves is as good as it can be. Herd immunity doesn't really apply to computer, so we have to keep them safe through our habits, usage, software we put on there, and making sure not to let in anything bad. The world's most secure computer is turned off, not connected to anything, buried six feet underground, and destroyed.