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Linux Antivirus? (lemmy.wtf)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.world
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I'm about to install bazzite on my wife's older (2017) Windows 10 machine, and I've been going over how to recreate everything she currently has. Most programs (even proprietary ones) are not an issue, but I'm not finding much in the antivirus department.

I never even thought to install one on my Linux machine (also on bazzite, but I have used other distros in the past). So although I am no stranger to Linux, this issue blindsided me.

I know clamav exists, and I'm educating myself on how to use it, but a GUI would be nice for the wife. She's not afraid of the terminal, but she likes the convenience of GUI programs.

Any suggestions? What do you use? Or is it just generally accepted that one should be careful and keep things up-to-date and that's enough?

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[–] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Incidentally, that’s exactly the same number as the total number of Win95 licenses sold, and I can’t recall Win95 being “too niche” for malware. Quite the opposite.

In Win95 days, "always online" was simply not a thing for the average household. Getting on the Internet - if you even had a connection at all - was equivalent to making a phone call, in that you "called in" to do the thing you wanted to do, then "hung up" when you were done (yes, I know dial-up did almost exactly that in practice, but it's still a good analogy).

Being "always online" is relatively recent, and anything online is going to be vulnerable to malware at some point in its life. Security patches need to keep up with that.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Exactly, and still the 60 million copies sold (of which maybe a quarter or so actually ever went online) was more than enough to make Win95 comically malware-infested.

    I'd venture to say that close to every one of the 60 million copies of Desktop Linux OSes running goes online frequently, so there's much more potential Linux targets than there ever were Win95 targets. That's why I'm saying the "Linux is to niche to get malware" argument doesn't really work.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    OS security has gotten far better though, and there are a literal shitton more devices to target (like IOT crap) than someone's slighty out-of-date Linux install.

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