Security

Hi all, this has probably been covered before but it never hurts to ask again for piece of mind. I only brought my acer (linux with 120gb and 512) yesterday and am really impressed with it already. My question is about the need not to have any internet security on it. Coming from windows vista, i cant get my head around not having anti-virus etc running all of the time. I guess that i just need reassurance from somebody vastly more experienced that all is well.
Cheers guys.

 

Why not see what Wikipedia says about it.

Summary: there are viruses for Linux, but its architecture makes it far harder for them to do any damage. As long as you use repositories for software installation, and don't give executable status to anything without thinking why, you're really very safe. If that level of risk still worries you (and it doesn;'t worry most Linux users), there are anti-virus products available.

Note that the Wikipedia age actually provides a list of viruses/malware which could affect a Linux system; compare the length of that list with the length of list you'd need for Windows. McAfee's list for new ones in the last month is bigger than the complete list for Linux!