Thread: Linux protection software

Linux nub here..Please share some programs that will help me protect my machine.

What do you mean? Antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall and such?

Well then you can relax. Becouse there is no viruses for linux, as windows executables can't be runned at linux excpet via special translation layer (wine) you are completely safe against such threat.

There is simple, but in most cases enough firewall built in (write "man iptables" in terminal or google it for more info) so you are safe from that point aswell.

Btw. what distribution you got? Ubuntu i suppose?

I thought there were less then 10 known viruses for Linux, so I don't think you need protection. I haven't had a virus for year and I use windows. Just don't surf to porn sites and you should be fine:p.

How do you know you don't have any virus or any kind of malware in your pc without having a antivirus?

Originally Posted by SBfreak

How do you know you don't have any virus or any kind of malware in your pc without having a antivirus?

After a year or two, I DLed a virus checker and did a scan. I had no virusses, only a few tracking-cookies.

Originally Posted by SBfreak

How do you know you don't have any virus or any kind of malware in your pc without having a antivirus?

- Install a software that can monitor your bandwidth, then shut down all your internet activity (download manager, torrent client, browser, automatic update).
If you see any upload / download activity, find out any executables that sent / receive data from internet.
If the name of the exe is suspicious, most likely it's a virus.

- See if there's any software that use CPU / RAM too much (more than 30-40%)

Originally Posted by alpacino

Just because you are using linux, it doesn't mean you safe from viruses and malware.

Actually it means. The very most malware software witch infects windows system of average user is either executable you got from e-mail, msn or downloaded in some suspicious crack, keygen, and so on.
All of these do not work on linux. On linux you grab software from repositories. As you probably know there is numereus linux distributions, and (almost) every distribution has its very own software repository. Witch is maintained by selected group of people. Hope you see now how hard is to spread virus in linux world.

Originally Posted by alpacino

You could say that 4 or 5 years ago, but now with the increasing popularity of linux, so comes the increase of virulence.

Popularity does not matter. What it matters is concept of operating system. In windows vast majority of people even doesn't know that there actually exists something named "limited account", becouse defoult account after you install windows is the administrator one. On countraire, in linux world, first thing you do after installing os is setting up you USER account, the one without any administrator privilegies. So program (virus) needs special premission access to critical, vital parts of your system. Hope you see now how hard is to install virus in linux world.

Originally Posted by alpacino

I don't use linux,

And yet, you know that linux need antiviruses. :X

These antiviruses that are used on linux are there not to protect linux system from infection, they are used to prevent eventual spreading/distribution of viruses that can harm Windows OS.