The difference between Windows and Linux is how easy it is to remove stuff like this on Linux.
It was a deb. Which means the installation script, on the vast majority of users systems, is going to run as root. Which means the ease of removal can, depending on how clever the malware author is, be anything up to and including "practically impossible unless you have a lot of experience removing clever rootkits from a livecd".
On Linux, she could have simply killed any offending processes (O.K. that's nontrivial, but no root permissions needed in theory) and check the (graphical, so-easy-to-use-a-caveman^H^Hgrandma-could-do-it) Gnome startup programs tool for suspicious entries
The malware in TFA on gnome-look was packaged as a deb file, and so (on the vast majority of systems) would need elevated privileges to install, and so have its installation script run as root.
Which means it's not just gnome startup programs you'd have to check, its every complicated, optimised-for-fast-startup-to-the-point-of-obfuscation (remember, Grandma's going to be running Ubuntu, not Slackware) startup script on the system. And you'd have to know it when you see it, which is not necessarily trivial if the malware author was clever. Maybe you could manage it; I certainly couldn't, I'd be installing from scratch.
I'm leery of the "Smart desktop" technology
As far as I can tell: Mandriva's name for NEPOMUK. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEPOMUK_(framework) , http://nepomuk.kde.org/
When software asks the user if he or she accepts the license agreement, software is, on the behalf of the owner and as a proxy, attempting to enter into a legal contract (EULA).
Oh, bah. If I hand you a contract which I've pre-signed, is the contract itself, "on the behalf of the owner and as a proxy", attempting to enter into the contract with you? No, of course not; I am, I'm merely pre-agreed with it. Analogously with software EULAs (up to maybe not strictly being a contract etc.).
Aptitude manages package selections far better including remembering that you installed library x simply to make package y happy.
...As does apt-get, since quite a few versions ago. Alias "apt-get remove" to "apt-get autoremove" to get it to automatically uninstall x when y gets removed.
The Linux Format article says it can import docx, pptx etc., which means they are Microsoft Office 2007 XML files, and not OOXML, the Published Standard.
Office 2007 OOXML files *are* a published standard -- the published standard in question being ECMA 376.
If what you actually meant was "...not OOXML, the Published ISO Standard", then say what you mean. But your original comment could be understood as saying that the spec Office 2007 uses is unpublished, wihch is obviously wrong.
(Not to mention that even saying that is ambiguous -- does "The ISO standard" refer to ISO 29500/Transitional or ISO 29500/Strict? The former is practically identical to ECMA 376, with the exception of minor tag semantic cleanup; whereas the latter is significantly different).
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson
