Adding more fuel to the Linux versus Windows fire, a US research firm this week released a survey that noted only eight percent of Linux developers had ever seen a virus infect their systems.

Adding more fuel to the Linux versus Windows fire, a US research firm this week released a survey that noted only eight percent of Linux developers had ever seen a virus infect their systems.

Evans Data, a research company that regularly polls developers, dug up the results by surveying 500 Linux developers.

An overwhelming majority -- 92 percent -- claimed that their machines had never been infected by malicious code, and fewer than seven percent said that they'd been the victims of three or more hacker intrusions.

Only 22 percent of Linux code cutters said that their systems had ever been hacked. 

A similar survey by Evans last year found that nearly 60 percent of non-Linux developers admitted they'd been victimised by security breaches, and 32 percent had been hit three or more times.

Does that mean Linux is a more secure OS? Nicholas Petreley, Evans Data's Linux analyst, certainly thinks so.

"It's not surprising that Linux systems aren't hacked to the degree that Windows-based machines can be exploited," he said in a statement. "The reasons for the greater inherent security of the Linux OS are simple, more eyes on the code mean that less slips by and the OS is naturally going to be better secured."

Another factoid from the July survey was that 76 percent of developers now believe SCO Group's ongoing lawsuits will "probably not" or "absolutely not" affect their company's adoption of the open-source OS.

That number is up eight percent over the last time the question was asked six months ago, a confirmation that SCO's sometimes-struggling legal battle isn't making much of an impression in the trenches.