this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2026
43 points (97.8% liked)

Linux

62676 readers
324 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I have always heard not to use antivirus on Linux but I saw the post about a guy getting a RAT exploit backdoored through wine and it had me thinking should I be using ClamAV or some other antivirus for Linux?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

First off, what is generally understood as "AV", are whole bloated suites, that scan surveil your browser usage, downloads, background processes, ip traffic, etc. They are not only over-the-top, often annoying with false positives ("I still exist, notice the good product!"), always a privacy nightmare and more often than not a mix of security theater and snake oil. But also a gaping security hole, because they need elevated privileges to do their tasks and are at the same time hastily cobbled together software ruines that do dangerous tasks like decoding media.

While the professional "AV" is applying security practices and in some cases (like spam mails) running a heuristical AV scanner over it.
You can of course do that on Desktop too; i've set up a ClamAV cronjob for my dads peace of mind. But keep in mind, that the heuristics are always a step behind: don't trust them blindly.

And btw, Firefox at least, has scans of downloads default enabled now (with a local list, no rivacy risk). Chromium too?