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Are there any antivirus applications that work on Ubuntu 16.04? Thanks!

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4 Answers 4

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As Rinzwind's answer explains the usefulness and necessity of such software is widely questioned.

However, should you decide your situation warrants it, you may want to know that Clam AV is a free open source antivirus toolkit designed for Linux/Unix systems. You can download the manual on the site.

It's available in Ubuntu repositories so you can install it with:

sudo apt install clamav

there is also a graphical front-end for it - Clam TK - this is optional, but you need clamav for clamtk to work. The devs describe it as:

An easy to use, light-weight, on-demand virus scanner for Linux systems

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To get this too:

sudo apt install clamtk
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  • "and I have had no virus issues." because there are exactly 0. Making the software useless and a waste of resources ;-)
    – Rinzwind
    Jul 22, 2016 at 6:49
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    @Rinzwind haha OK, only good for staving off FUD >_<
    – Zanna
    Jul 22, 2016 at 6:59
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"that work"

No.

All of the anti-virus programs for Linux are bogus. Those companies that own that software want you to spend money on them. That is it. Any warning by anti-virus software I myself (in 10+ years or so of using Linux and Unix) have seen have been bogus notices . Often those programs use Windows rules as a means to test Linux files. Never going to work.

There are no virusses in the wild that have Linux as a target. The only threat we have are rootkits and those are mostly installed to target a -specific- machine to gather information (think password for gaming sites, credit card details).

And since the software repositories is free from rootkits you will only get that installed if you install software from untrusted resource. In contrary to Windows users -we- do -not- do that.

The more important rules for Linux users ...

  • Make sure your admin password is good enough.
  • Make sure permissions are set correctly when you mess with them (if you host something yourself; like a website: never do a chmod 777).

Our systems are more likely to get hacked due to an easy to guess password.

The only reason to install a virus scanner is when you use your Linux box as a gateway to Windows machines where those Windows machines use a local mail system (Outlook) or are allowed to download software from any resource those users can find. Scanning those files for virusses and stopping them from getting to Windows systems is good practice. But this is more useful for companies and not a single user desktop. We desktop users connect Windows to the internet alongside our Linux machine and then you need a scanner on Windows.

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    Never, ever, say never. linux.com/learn/myth-busting-linux-immune-viruses
    – iWeasel
    Aug 17, 2016 at 15:53
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    That blog is wrong: a -rootkit- is NOT a virus. That person is confusing -malware- for -virusses-. There are currently -no- virusses active in the world. Not a single one is capable of wrecking Ubuntu/Linux like it can and has on Windows. We are talking about virusses here. Not about malware.
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 17, 2016 at 17:27
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    I suspect that nothing will ever change your mind. I really think, though, that your approach is akin to the chap whose last words as he looked over the parapet were "they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist....". help.ubuntu.com/community/Linuxvirus
    – iWeasel
    Aug 18, 2016 at 10:49
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    Linux has a good built permissions system and only when a user himself messes up in regards to that is there a problem. Yes, a system can be compromized when targetted but that is and always has been a single machine and not (as with Windows) rampant through millions of machines. And no: in -this- regard (specific: virusses) you will not see me change my mind. There is no reason for it ;-). You can be all paranoid as you want for all I care but -virusses- up to today have not been a problem on Linux. Rootkits though are (but those are not virusses and not what asked in the questions).
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 18, 2016 at 11:07
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    Have a look through that link and you will see that all of them are projects that never bore fruit. For a virus to break our OS it needs to be inside the Ubuntu repositories and in a piece of software we all download to be harmful. I (up to now) trust Canonical fully. And, for all other situations, without the admin password all harm is limited to /home/. And to finish off: downloading a virus from that list myself and have it wreck my system is easy. But somebody else is not going to be able to do that.
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 18, 2016 at 11:14
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There are a few available, but they are of little to no help on Linux. Starting from Clamtk, Avast and AVG to name a few. The only time I used one was for scanning viruses on my Windows partition. As long as you don't expose yourself to malware and rogue packages/scripts, you may not need it anytime soon. Since most of package management is handled by repositories.

More Info:

Why you may not need an antivirus on Linux

List of available antiviruses for Linux

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You can choose between open source - clamav, which has clamtk gui, and closed source - nod32 from eset or avast - this one you might to find harder. The realtime scan is supported by nod, but check the compatibility with trial version.

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