Best 4 Antivirus Software for Your Ubuntu OS
As we already know, Linux is immune to viruses and other nasty malware. However, there are still a lot of other reasons to install an antivirus program on your Linux computer.
Reasons include:
- You have a dual-boot computer (Windows/Ubuntu) and you want to scan Windows drives,
- You have Windows computers on your network, which you want to scan,
- You are operating an e-mail gateway with Linux and want to check incoming/outgoing e-mails,
- You want to scan Windows drives/shares etc.,
- You are exchanging files with Windows users and you don’t want to pass on potentially infected files,
- You are sending/forwarding e-mails to Windows users and you don’t want them to get infected with the attachments.
A few years ago users didnt have many options in terms of antivirus software, ClamAV and AVG thought to be the only ones. However, these days there are many antivirus software providers in the market, which offers the user better pricing and also better protection.
Avest! Linux Home Edition
avast! is offered as a free download for the Linux platform for personal and non-commercial use. The antivirus kernel is exactly the same as the antivirus kernel for avast! for theWindows platform , so the users will receive the same updates. The update frequency is twice or thrice per week regularly but it becomes more frequent during the malware breakout times. The user interface is very intuitive so I’d not expect a steep learning curve with the program. You can scan all of your drives, selected files/folders, quarantine items, store them in virus chest and send them to avast! labs for further analysis. There is also a command-line utility for experienced users.
avast! can scan almost all compressed archives except MAPI, CAB, ACE, CHM, 7ZIP and NTFS-streams. Additionally, it can also scan executable package formats. Since the Linux version of the program shares the same antivirus kernel with the Windows version, it is not likely that you will have any problems with the other file formats, such as Microsoft Office, PDF etc..
AVG
In comparison with avast!, AVG offers basic protection for Linux users for private and non-commercial use. In the download page, AVG explicitly states that the Linux version is limited and there is no support provided. Given myprevious experience with AVG and the limited version, I am reluctant to recommend the program for any user.
ClamAV
ClamAV is oriented towards e-mail scanning on mail gateways rather than performing scans on the drives and/or networks. ClamAV is released under GNU/GPL V.2 so there is virtually no restriction for its use. It can scan many file formats, including compressed files (SFX files included), Microsoft’s CAB files, CHM files, HTML, PDF, RTF, Microsoft Office macro viruses, trojans, worms and even mobile viruses. It supports almost all e-mail formats, making it an ideal tool to install in the mail gateways.
F-Prot Antivirus
F-Prot is oriented towards the UNIX and Linux servers, but this does not mean that it cannot be used for personal computers. Instead, it is offered for download for both personal Linux computers and workstations. F-Prot can scan incoming e-mails (it integrates to the existing Sendmail, Postfix and Qmail installations), can scan hard disks and removable drives with the ability to scan compressed files and includes an on-access scanner and a filesystem monitor.
13 Comments
And don’t forget the best one, Avira AntiVir Personal free for Linux, under the wood of Avira AntiVir Workstation.
Thanks for the review.
Typo in the subtitle: it’s Avast, not Avest
Oh dear, oh dear yet another lame journo who wants a few extra page views from putting “Ubuntu” in the title.
you may be surprised because Linux is the world’s most easy to learn OS and many people use it.
Yes it indeed is easy and most geeks use it….not for lamers…enjoy your anitivirus discussion to save your ass…I am least worried and you know why
i use avg
I was interested in some of the reasons for running anti-virus on linux. Specifically, scanning windows computers over a network. Is it possible to do a thorough scan over a network?
I don’t know much about malicious software, but would some kind of AV software need to run on the local machine to do a complete scan of that machine?
the best av for linux today is esset nod32