Does Ubuntu come with a free Anti-Virus? I can not seem to find one. Does it have one or does it not? When I looked on the website and on searches it said nothing about this.
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https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Antivirus – xangua Dec 04 '13 at 01:00
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Ubuntu, and Linux in general, are virus-resistant by design in at least two ways:
Fragments of Windows executable code (viruses) don't natively run on Linux. The system call method differs.
Linux/Unix does protections/permissions differently from Windows, so the execution of an evil script by a user can only harm the user executing it, not the system. Viruses want to harm the system.
You can get Anti-virus programs for Linux, but they are used for checking E-mail for Windows viruses (e.g. on mail servers).
waltinator
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Ubuntu does not come with an Antivirus installed by default, but there are antiviruses available for Ubuntu. Clamtk a Graphical front end to ClamAv, Avast, Click here for more information on this.
rstreeter78
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Ubuntu doesn't come with antivirus, it depends on user permissions, and security updates to keep itself from becoming infected. Additionally most antivirus tools available for linux DON'T scan for linux viruses, they only scan for Windows based viruses. The approach of updates and permissions makes it difficult for a virus to infect a system, and very difficult to determine if a linux system has files on it that contain viral code. It's one of Ubuntu's biggest drawbacks in my eyes, because many people end up unconciously helping to spread viral code to other systems. It should however be noted that there aren't very many viruses for linux (as far as we know).
Comodo Antivirus For Linux is one of the best free antivirus products I've found for Ubuntu, it comes in 64bit and 32bit, but only scans for Windows viruses. It also doesn't work on all versions of Ubuntu due to driver problems.
ClamAV is a simple manual scan only antivirus for 32bit and 64bit, again it only detects windows viruses.
Personally I would suggest running a Windows manual scan antivirus product in wine since you will have a better selection, and either way you only detect windows viruses.
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It doesn't generally need an antivirus because it's not Windows or Mac. Viruses of Mac and windows don't affect Linux. The viruses that they do make for linux are little to non-existent. If they are seen, they're are likely to be patched in the kernel updates in a short amount of time. If you still insist, there's clamtk with ClamAV for linux.
