Is it possible for software to PHYSICALLY harm your computer?

Ubuntu will not physically hurt your computer, in all likelihood, but it is possible for some software to do physical harm to hardware components. For example, running Spinrite on a solid state drive will eat a crapton of the drive's write cycles, which will shorten the life of the drive unnecessarily, and that's harm in my book.

Of course it is possible for software to physically harm your computer, as it is possible to control all of the operating parameters including temperature, etc, however this is EXTREMELY unlikely to be the case in a widely used operating system and more probably going to be a virus or perhaps just a poorly coded applications that causes runaway processor activity. You should have no concerns about putting Ubuntu on a new laptop, in fact it is possible to purchase laptops from several manufacturers with variations of Linux pre-installed.

Many things are possible. Few things actually happen. Long, LONG, ago, when hard disk drives were literally the size of a washing machine, it was possible to create all kinds of physical havok with programs running on a computer.

Even relatively recently, say within the last 10 years, it was possible to cause damage to a CRT monitor that would render it inoperative by manipulating the operating parameters. On a modern laptop, I think the only physical vulnerability would be the internal temperature of the system - however, you are infinitely more likely to cause the heat-death of your computer by actually running it on your lap, than by running any given program on it. The operating system really does not matter from the standpoint of this kind of vulnerability; however, the user community does.

From my 20+ years of experience in the field, I can confidently say that Linux/Ubuntu users are smarter and more likely to know how to cause the damage you fear, but that most of the black hats who are *likely* to want to cause damage are in the Windows community. Given that the windows community is easily 100x larger than the Unix community, you can do the math for yourself. But really, you have nothing to worry about.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.