There are opposed opinions regarding the need of antivirus if you are using a Linux distro. My opinion is that if you use your pc with care you probably don’t need it.
Now, I have 3 different antivirus programs installed in my Ubuntu 10.10. The reason is I use them to scan hard drives and USB drives from work. I rather scan them from Linux than from Windows. Sometimes I also run them on my system, but I have never found anything.
The three antivirus programs I use are:
- Avast free for Linux
- AVG free for Linux
- Clam AV
The three of them are only scanners, they do not have all the different tools that their windows versions have, but again, you don’t really need all that in your Linux box, do you?
Download Avast free for Linux and you’ll get a simple but sufficient GUI that allows you to update, and scan your whole system or specific folders.
AVG free for Linux gives you the same options, but it is a command line version only, no GUI there. Here are the basic commands:
-
sudo avgctl --start -
sudo avgupdate -
sudo avgscan "/folder/to scan" -
man avgscan
Lastly ClamAV provides mostly the same features with a GUI. Ubuntu provides an installer for this one.
I have have also heard good comments of F-Prot but have never gotten to use it.
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