Antivirus for Ubuntu

I am trying to look for an antivirus for Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn x86. I have looked into AVG's and avast's antivirus for Linux and they seem to be pretty basic. I cannot find any option for real-time protection, which makes me think that AVG and avast antivirus for Linux does not have real-time protection, or maybe I'm wrong about this?

I'm considering ClamAV but I don't really know about its track record. I've used avast before and I know they are reliable.

 

Avast only has a Scanner like app for Linux, and you must install and run it on your Root Account in order for it to scan ALL your files.(That's what I do)

But most likely a Virus can't get to your files that requires root access anyways. So using Avast to scan Home or default directories will be good enough.

I heard ClaimAV is pretty decent, but I never tried it. IMO you really don't need a Real Time AV.

 

People will argue about the reasons, but unless I'm mistaken, the general consensus is that there are no Linux viruses in the wild. In addition, the number of Linux viruses is much smaller than Windows viruses, so for most people, running an antivirus program is not really necessary on a Linux machine.

Even on Windows, on a patched machine, I've found common sense to be much more useful than any antivirus program anyway.

Basically, from my understanding, the main reasons why people run antivirus in Linux are 1) as remediation, repair of a Windows partition, and 2) to protect Windows clients on a mail/file server.

And, about ClamAV, I believe its the most widely used antivirus for Linux. It's mainly used on mail servers, but I think that shows it has a proven track record.

 

I've never really looked, but I'm not aware of any real-time scanning type antivirus programs for linux. I've never heard of a workstation/home computer getting any kind of malware while running linux. I think you'll find pretty much unanimous opinion that antivirus is completely unnecessary.

That said, I do run F-PROT nightly on my fedora web/mail/backup server. The only thing it has ever complained about are a couple of viral emails backed up from my laptop.

 

check this thread out
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=141671

but, i was going to suggest avast because i know they have one, but clamAV sounds better for linux

 

Is there a reason you need real-time protection? Things don't run under Linux the same way they do under Windows, you can't accidentally run an installer or anything without specifically telling the computer to do so, and none of the email clients do anything stupid like run attachments automatically, and I've never seen a Java virus designed for anything other than Windows.

Basically, you're safe using Linux for most anything. I've tried running the most bug-ridden spyware I can find under Wine, and it didn't even want to install The only reason virus protection really exists under Linux is to keep you from accidentally passing a virus on to a Windows user. The only time in my many years as a Linux geek that I've seen ClamAV run is to scan email as it's passed through a system, to prevent it from getting to Windows clients.

 

Yeah, seriously, QFT.

Get with the program.

(jus kiddn)

 

The antivirus stuff you read about linux is mostly for protection of servers, not everyday computing. I don't think we even need full-time antivirus on Windows if already using malware protection and being careful about opening some files.

 

Right. There are no linux viruses*. The available virus scanners are intended for servers that serve Windows hosts. Email and file servers. These virus scanners will scan those emails and files for viruses that could infect the Windows hosts that are being served.

If you're looking for a virus scanner for your own personal PC that's running Linux, well forget about doing that and go do something useful with your time instead. Linux != Windows.


[*] there have been 'concept' viruses created on linux (that have proven useless and ineffective). There are no linux viruses in the wild, nor has there ever been, so there's nothing to scan for. A Windows virus has no effect whatsoever on a Linux machine.

 

"Linux" and "virus" don't go in the same sentence. Unless that sentence also contains "My" and "system has never had a".

 

And if it did work, it would only corrupt your Wine (fake windows) directory.

 

Avira has a Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris classic version of their anti virus if you are really worried about getting anything. I don't know if they have real time scanning, heres a linky.

I can only think that a virus scanner can help is if you swap files in between your windows machine or partition.

 

Mandriva provides Kaspersky AV, but as the others here tell I really don't see the point since there are no viruses on Linux...

 

The timing could have been better, but I just read this. For the record, I use Fprot on my server, but it looks like I will have to check out ClamAV.

...
The "winners" in last night's contest were Linux tools from Kaspersky and Symantec, and the open source Clam AV. All three tools caught 100 percent of the viruses they encountered. FProt and Sophos caught 94 percent; McAfee caught 89 percent; and GlobalHauri, Fortinet, and SonicWall caught 61 percent.
...

http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=131246&WT.svl=news1_1

 

I had to do a bit of digging to get to it, but the conclusion I've come to after reading that article is the same as I had before. Running antivirus is not necessary to run on Linux unless you're running it to protect a Windows installation that could have access to your files (say, to scan e-mails, if you run a server, or if you dual boot).

If you look at the Excel spreadshhet, or the actual test set from this page, you'll see that the viruses that aren't contained in zip files are all .exe, .scr, .com, etc, all Windows file extensions that wouldn't really do anything in a Linux environment.

 

Yeah, really no need for an antivirus in Linux.