Windows is monolithic, Linux is modular.
On a monolithic system, a small coding error in a user app can become a large error further down the software stack, as the whole stack is complied.
On a modular system, a small coding error in a user app will result the user app not working with other modules further down the stack, forcing the coder to fix the small error.
For example, IE includes a web browser and the top 3 levels of the TCP/IP stack, so a small error in the browser can become a security hole in the IP layer of TCP/IP stack.
I know, you are going to say IE doesn't include the top 3 layers of the TCP/IP stack. It can now be uninstalled. Sorry, it does, as uninstalling IE, at most, removes only iexplore.exe, not all the other exes, dlls, etc.
But don't take my word for it. Here's an experiment you can do yourself.
1)Build a Windows virtual machine, any Windows, even Win 7. Do it on a VM because the system will be require a complete re-install by the end of the experiment.
2)Update to the latest version of IE.
3)Find the log for the IE update.
4)Restart in safe mode and delete all files listed in the IE update log.
5)Reboot, or rather, try to reboot.
This will show, with no doubt, that at a minimum your system will no longer have a IP address, and at a maximum, will fail to boot at all because the OS will be missing required files.
The exact same experiment on Linux, substituting FireFox for IE, of course, will result in a perfectly usable system, sans web browser.
This is just one example of the inherit insecure nature of monolithic vs. modular software design.
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