Rectangular area lights can create softer shadows and more realistic reflections for your scenes.
In real time rendering, the first half of this is false. The shadow casting for area lights is identical to point lights. They aren’t casting from everywhere on the surface of the area, just from the center point.
They may be handling it correctly when baking.
Windows desktops are targeted because any place you have a user, you have a vulnerability. The vast majority of Linux installs are servers with extremely limited user activity, which narrows the attack vectors significantly.