Linux Kernel provides more security techniques than Windows indeed, but they need to be used. To point out CVEs is kind of stupid. The Linux kernel never commited any entries to the CVE database for years, they started since February 2024 doing so, because they gave up on their opposition. They warned, if they do this now, the databases will get flooded with CVEs. Because in the kernel context, every bug counts as a security problem, if you look at it from the right perspective. This is a difference to Windows CVEs.
Of course this is great for those CVEs database providers because they now can sell their stuff happily.
What you need are not CVE entries for the Linux Kernel, but the latest supported Linux Kernel installed.
And srsly: Antivirus is snake oil. Using software with Administrator rights in Windows or even Linux, which parses every file, is fucking dangerous. It is usable on a mailserver, where the antivirus process is containerised or virtualized.
And what is the point with firewalls I read here? The most distros have firewalls enabled. When were they not there? Iptables was always there and I had to configure it, so I could allow or disallow incoming traffic. I almost never had to install it manually.
Edit:
Regarding CVEs, here the what Linux CNA tells:
Note, due to the layer at which the Linux kernel is in a system, almost any bug might be exploitable to compromise the security of the kernel, but the possibility of exploitation is often not evident when the bug is fixed. Because of this, the CVE assignment team is overly cautious and assign CVE numbers to any bugfix that they identify. This explains the seemingly large number of CVEs that are issued by the Linux kernel team.
Any bugfix is a CVE
Every bugfix is a CVE. Even if it is maybe not a security problem in first place, but it might be one in the kernel context, so everything is a CVE. Also other CVEs from other applications, open source or not, doesn’t have to mean that much. You have to see those database quite critical. Especially if you need very esoteric, almost magical methods to exploit.
When the people of the Linux Kernel started flooding them, because every bug is a security problem, those Database providers were and are very happy. It makes good money, those data is seller from other providers to companies. And now you really have to use their service, because the kernel have soooooooo many security problems! It is not like developers or security teams are happy about this shit. But if the senior leaders insist on use those CVEs, you don’t have any choice. And it is not that unusual, that it is not needed to address them.
The Linux Kernel can provide and provides more security when you use them. It is the decision of the distribution if they want to enable selinux or apparmor, enable kernel options, which make your system more hardened with memory encryption, page poison or kernel lock down and and and. Since this is only the kernel, the userland can provide more features, which some distributions also enables.
The way you can elevate applications and define special rights for the usage of devices or OS functions, is incomparable to standard Windows. Would only user, group and rwx exist, they wouldn’t be any lxc, podman, docker or whatever today. Windows does not the same now. Windows does it different and can’t do some things regarding elevation of rights and their restriction by design.