this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
41 points (95.6% liked)
Linux
67275 readers
859 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
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I have yet to have many issues with it, so far. So many people say you don't need an antivirus on linux, but I am of the belief that you should have it regardless. Better safe to have a scanner just in case, especially if you download anything off the internet. Doesn't matter if it's from a supposedly safe source, it's better IMO to just scan it just in case.
For ages it was safe to download and open random files on Linux, because they simply would not run. Now Linux is a very desirable target for criminals, so they learned to write multiplatform viruses.
The best option would be an automatic sandbox for running random crap downloaded who knows where, and Android does that automatically, but on desktop Linux you need to either create a new user (and remove world-readable permissions from your main account files), or create a custom Docker container, or create a chroot, or launch a VM, all of which require half a day of learning new tools, and then debugging why graphics would not work.
You don't need to do any of that stuff to achieve application sandboxing. bubblewrap or firejail exist for exactly this purpose. Firejail in particular can integrate with AppArmor (which most mainstream distros that aren't RHEL or Fedora ship with) so you get MAC on top of sandboxing.
I'll check them out