Someone tweeted me this question the other day, “Do I need to install anti-virus on my UbuntuLinux installation?” The answer was a simple, “No…you’re not subject to the viruses Windows users are.”

Of course, the more politic answer was what UbuntuGeek suggests below when he recommends installing a new antivirus tool on UbuntuLinux:

Just because you use Linux, it doesn’t mean your computer doesn’t have viruses or worms. They are just lying dormant, embedded in the EXE files on the NTFS partitions, or hiding beside those DLLs on the dual-boot computers, waiting for you to send them to your Windows-using friends.

Unless you sadistically enjoy seeing your non-Linux peers suffer, you should act responsibly and get yourself an anti-virus scanner that runs on Linux. One such is the latest BitDefender Antivirus Scanner For Unices. If you agree to use it on your home computers only, you can have it for free – that’s free as in freeware, not Richard Stallman free.

Virus is a catch-all phrase, and BitDefender’s designed to catch them all – from executable viruses, script viruses, macro viruses, to backdoors, trojans, spyware, adware, diallers, and more. BitDefender looks inside files created by over 70 packers, compressors, and installers, from the most common ones such as Zip, 7-Zip, and .tar.gz to more exotic ones such as UPX, ASPack, PECrypt, etc. We found that it even picked up an infected file inside an archive split into multiple volumes.
Source: UbuntuGeek

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