Linux antivirus?

[Greenman]

New to linux, just set up a box running Ubunto 10.10, do I need anti virus? It's my mother in laws computer, used for email and the comcast home page.

BTW, Ubunto is pretty cool, easy to setup, easy to use. I'm a noob and had a working installation in an hour.

 

[SKORPI0]

AVG Anti-virus Free Edition

 

[Rifter]

I usually dont bother, i used to run AVG once a month but after a year of never finding anything i came to the conclusion that no one write viruses for linux.

 

[Greenman]

Thank you.

 

[sourceninja]

Almost all anti-virus tools for linux are checking for windows viruses. This helps you prevent forwarding an email that is safe for you, but has a windows virus in it. If you are only concerned about getting linux viruses, don't be.

 

[Spyro]

I have been using linux since 1994 - I have never seen a linux virus. Trust me, you really have absolutely no need to be concerned about viruses on linux.

I do run virus scanning software on my email server, but the purpose of that is to catch viruses in email before they get to any windows users.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Antiviruses that run on Linux are kind of useless. They're good for protecting other people, but Linux needs no antivirus.

 

[beginner99]

Antiviruses that run on Linux are kind of useless. They're good for protecting other people, but Linux needs no antivirus.

that's why linux should never get too popular because then people ("hackers") will start looking for security holes and they are there for sure. But If you need to decide to rob a bank with 100$ or 100 Mio $ it's clear which one you choose if everything else is similar.

 

[Nothinman]

that's why linux should never get too popular because then people ("hackers") will start looking for security holes and they are there for sure. But If you need to decide to rob a bank with 100$ or 100 Mio $ it's clear which one you choose if everything else is similar.

They're already looking, it's just that the exploits get less press because of the lower consumer adoption. Just look at all of the root exploits for Android phones. Although in general most of the root exploits require local access and most remote exploits are in "3rd party" software like web servers and crap PHP code.