this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024

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What if somebody wrote a virus that infected windows computers to replace the OS with linux? (self.linux)

submitted 2 months ago by onlinepersona to c/linux

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Would their owners even notice?

Inspired by Kaspersky deletes itself, installs UltraAV antivirus without warning

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That would be a hell of a virus!

But people would notice, and pretty quickly. Even if this megavirus could somehow manage to do it without data loss, mimicking every aspect of windows perfectly, making file structure work the same, etc; it couldn't do anything about the programs that simply don't work on linux yet.

Once the first person noticed, it would be a huge deal

[–] onlinepersona 7 points 2 months ago

It could be a "clever" one that only installed linux if linux compatible applications were installed. That might lower the risk of being noticed.

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