There is an antivirus for linpus linux???? Linpus needs an antivirus???? :mrgreen:
The only time I have seen antivirus be of use on a linux system is when it was deployed on a linux server on a network to scan windows servers
Linux is not like Windows - Anti Virus makes up for the bits of Windows that don't work. AV software is not required in Linux because it is so much cleverer. There are roughly 60,000 known viruses for Windows in its history, compared to about 40 for Linux, none of which have ever caused any real threat. Most Windows users jaws hit the floor when i tell them this, so here is it explained better than i ever could: http://www.linux.com/feature/60208 Essentially, when you buy a Windows machine from a shop and you add your name as the first user, you become the Administrator. You have full access to all of the Windows OS, i.e. you could easily tear it apart from the inside and Windows would be quite happy to stand by and let you do it because you are an Administrator. This means that anyone infecting your PC with a virus can do the same. In Linux, the first user does not become the Administrator (referred to as "root" in linux circles). What you do have to provide is a root password for the root account which no one user can own. Whenever the system senses you or anyone else trying to do anything potentially harmful to the system, it will ask you for this password to allow it to continue. You will need to supply it when installing software etc... If you have a PC running Vista you will see something similar whenever you click an application ("Are you sure you want to run this application?") but it doesn't work nearly as well. Also, in Windows harmful viruses can easily be disguised as family photos or similar by renaming a files extension. Linux is cleverer than this and can tell whether a file contains anything harmful before it is executed. The only real reason to run an anti-virus package is to scan for Windows viruses. Why scan for Windows viruses on a Linux machine? Well if you are networked to a Windows machine you could be transferring infected files to it and infecting your Windows PC, as explained here: http://www.techthrob.com/tech/linuxav.php If you are still not convinced then it can't hurt to install some AV software, there two most prominent are Clam and AVG: http://www.clamav.net/binary.html#pagestart http://free.avg.com/ww.download?prd=afl I don't use either on my AAO, but AVG on my WIndows machine is very good. Hope this helps, PM me if you have any more questions.
Hi, There are very little antivirus for linux and as mate has told, normally are for servers. Don't worry about it.
I'm quite a Linux enthusiast -- I've been using it and developing for it for over ten years. But I don't think Linux's relative freedom from viruses is due to `cleverness'. The real reason, I think, is that there just aren't enough Linux desktops out there to create the critical mass needed for a virus to thrive. I agree the the tendency of Windows users to do word processing with admin privileges contributes to the problem, but there are any increasing number of Linux systems out there that are being operated the same way. I would imaging that as desktop/laptop Linux grows in popularity, viruses will become more common. Unfortunately.
I agree kevin, looking back at that post it's a bit incorrect in some places. I think most would agree that Linux is less susceptible to malicious attack however, if they were on a similar popularity level however.
Maybe :/ But the weakest link in the system administration chain is generally the.... user I have my Windows Vista machine set up more-or-less the same as my Linux machines -- the only services that run with admin privileges are the ones where it is essential. The only user accounts on the system are unprivileged, and the filesystem permissions are extremely restrictive. This is actually the default, more or less, with Vista. I'm not really sure that this setup is intrinsically more susceptible to security attacks than my Linux desktops are, except for the fact that there are so many more Windows-hostile systems out there than there are Linux-hostile systems. The problem is that many Vista users ignore all the new features and work as an administrative user. Many even disable the `user access control' thingie that MS included to discourage people from doing that Anyway, my point wasn't to argue the relative merits of Windows and Linux -- like I care one way or the other -- but to suggest that we Linux users ought not to become too complacent about security.
I disagree about the reason Linux is free from viruses, I believe is is more due Linux being more secure by design and (at least until recently) the users are more tech savvy and aware of security issues. But yes, this could change as the Linux user demographic changes to include less tech savvy users.
Example please. Be aware I am a programmer and have a very good grounding in Linux and UNIX design, and the history of malware on Unices. The only real difference in security between Linux and current XP, is that most XP users can automatically escalate a program to administrator privilege where it can reek the most damage and subvert root. However in Linux there is absolutely nothing stopping a virus from accessing all a users files, and infecting and deleting them at will. And there have been plenty of local exploits to gain root privileges once a user account is compromised. Look through your package update manager and I bet you will see "fixes local exploit/privilege escalation" plenty of times in security updates. The problem was with older versions of XP that ran random code without user interaction (email attachments in particular), now days most of the XP viruses rely on the user being stupid and running them. On Vista they have to click through a privilege escalation dialogue (but most users are to stupid to understand what "privilege escalation" means) to let a piece of malware do what it can do on a standard XP account. This is only a step down in security from asking the user to sudo a executable, or making them su with a password. If Linux had the market share of XP there would be idiot users running attachments about free airplane tickets, and getting root kitted. The Fedora project recently got there web servers taken out by a hacker, so your poxy home Linux box is no challenge at all. If you want "secure by design" you go to something like NetBSD. I use Linux because I like the license and UNIX, not because I believe the delusion that it protects idiot users from being idiots (I am not an idiot, and I have never got a virus, even on XP).
FUD? I'm not sure about that. As far as I can see, the only thing that makes Linux less amenable to viruses and all that rubbish other than user behaviour is that Linux apps are generally designed to run with the minimum necessary prvileges, and the OS back that up. The problem with Windows until very recently was that if you actually wanted to work this way, you couldn't, because OS was so pooly set up for it. There's still a heap of popular Windows software that will only run with administrative rights, because it does mad stuff like writing config files in its own installation directory. Because Windows made it so difficult for people to use their computers as unprivileged users, nobody had any incentive to write software that would run properly as an unprivileged user. This let to a descending spiral of weak apps leading to increased permissions leading to weak apps, and so on. Other than a general propensity to run user apps with low permissions, I can't think of anything than makes Linux inherently more secure than recent Windows versions. Can you? My point in all this (there is one, really) is that if Linux becomes really popular on desktop machines, there's going to be a tendency to develop distributions along the Windows `everyone an administrator' line. This would be just to make life easy for lazy or inexperienced users who can't get their heads around basic security concepts. And if that happens (Heaven forefend) Linux users would end up in no better position the Windows users so far as viruses and all the rest of it is concerned. Or so it seems to me, anyway. As I've said before, our real enemy here is complacency.
Such as allowing sudo for all users with no password - um, as the One does? (Though I think most people would accept that the One's implementation of Linux is rather weird, it is concerning that this sort of thing could become widespread).
Well, of course there are occasions when you need admin access for reasonable use of a computer. The One at least does not run its desktop software as root. Many Linux-based PDAs do exactly that. But Linpus should really demand a password for admin access, or at least put up some sort of warning message, so inexperienced users who get told ``Just run sudo xxx'' know that they're doing something that might be risky.
Hi guys, Thanks for all of this informations, they are very helpfull. I use an Aspire One with Linpus and 512 MB, and now I know that I don't need any antivirus. But what about an antispyware and firewall ? Are they also useless ? I don't have any problem for the moment with my AA, but I would like to konw that too.
Linux distributions use firewall as part of the net connectivity system and not as an add on, thus the answer is; you already have a firewall installed by default and pre-configured in the distribution. What you may want is to define your own firewall rules instead of using the default ones for your distro. You can do it either editing directly the configuration files or using a graphical software that allows you to edit them graphically instead of using text.
