At the weekend this topic came up among some friends, because NEW (Cuban distribution) is promoted or presented with a antivirus in the isos it distributes.
As is logical, the question came up, what need do users of GNU / Linux to use an antivirus? To protect ourselves from what?
Antivirus on the market there are many, Avira, Avast, Kaspersky, Nod32 and even recently I discovered Bullguard Antivirus, some of them with a version for GNU / Linux and of course, closed source and paid.
On the other hand, in GNU / Linux I think that the most popular alternative has been ClamAV used mainly in business servers, for which there are even projects that have tried to create a graphical interface to manage it in a simpler way and use it in the same way as those mentioned above.
No operating system is foolproofThey all have vulnerabilities but we know that GNU / Linux is possibly one of the safest with regard to viruses.
So the question is, does NOVA really need an antivirus? And I think the answer is: SI.
I explain. Although NOVA's own users are not at risk with this type of malicious software, unfortunately there are many users in our country who continue to use Windows.
Therefore, an infected email message that apparently does not affect GNU / Linux users, if it can cause a lot of harm to Windows users.
And many of us may think: Well, nobody tells them to have Windows. But unfortunately we have to understand that everyone uses what they want, what they can, or what they are forced to use.
In this case our moral obligation is that if it is in our hands, we cannot allow a friend, family member or co-worker to suffer the consequences.
I do not use antivirus, but in the case of NOVA, which is aimed at Companies, Institutions also, if I think it is necessary that they have an antivirus.
Ideally, servers should have ClamAV well implemented and updated, in this way we would not have the need to use an Antivirus on our computer, but it could also be the case that its bases do not detect any new malicious code.
It does not hurt to have extra protection, although I repeat, in a Business Environment, in addition to the fact that it is almost certain that by Computer Security policy, it is established to use Antivirus Software.
How do you see it, is it necessary or not?
I don't see it necessary. I am of the opposite thought. The same that you mention in the post: Who sends them to use windows ?!
What if they are forced? Well, bad luck. Sometimes they force me to send things in office format and I'm not crying. If I can put up with the fact that winbug users don't accept my open formats, then I'm not going to be good people (and asshole) to clean their pods. Fuck them and install their antivirus!
I am very sorry, but on this subject I have no half measures. It is not my mission in life to make your windows more secure. I don't care if they use it forced or not. I am not going to waste my disk space or computing time to help you with a failure that my Operating System does not have.
I stay with your phrase:
"It is not my mission in life to make your windows more secure"
I love it 🙂
Totally agree !!!
I loved the phrase XD hehe 🙂! frame it and put gold badges on it 😛
Same here. That they use Linux or that they have an antivirus !!!. For that we have open source, to be able to read the source code and see if it has bad or good intentions.
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hahaha .. a brutal opinion, but very true.
In the emails that I send, I put the following message at the bottom.
GNU / Linux User N ° 529681
NOTICE:
If you use Windows, check beforehand the files that I send you with your Antivirus.
It already happened to me a couple of times, where I caused the windows pc to jump the antivirus windows like crazy ..
Greetings ..
Do you realize that with what you say you act precisely like the company that you hate so much? ... example: We are Microsoft, we are going to create computers and eat the competition ... it hurts for them that they do not have the money to be able to make themselves known and develop ... let's buy technology and make it obsolete to sell things overdue for a longer time ... if they don't they have more is their fault for not knowing how to program / have money / or look for it ..
Of course, you help everyone a lot .. saying that it is okay not to help others because it is not your mission .. and blablabla .. but I really don't know what you do using gnu / linux .. because I see that you are worth 100% what is his philosophy ...
Gnu / Linux is an alternative ... and it not only helps us to use a free operating system ... it shares ideas that we can be better human beings in this disgusting world ...
I am 100% in agreement with your comment, they must have their antivirus, it is their problem if they do not have it. Like one, sometimes you are forced to save documents in .doc since few want to use libreoffice or openoffice despite being free, and they use office (which does not support 100% free formats, despite being free) that they clean the files with viruses that do not affect us.
Your sentence sums it up »It is not my mission in life to make your windows more secure.»
of course it is necessary: that you use Linux does not mean that you do not have viruses, only that they do not harm you ... but that does not imply that the security problem is you, for the rest
It is about living in community.
I think it never hurts to have Clam-AV, preferably with a graphical interface like ClamTK .. why? Because as a linux user, many friends come to me asking me to disinfect their pendrives, external hard drives, etc ... and it costs me nothing (apart from deleting suspicious files that we all know as the suspicious autorun and .exe) scan them drive with a lightweight and totally reliable antivirus like Clam.
In Linux the use of antivirus is to help others, rather than for personal protection. I think the same as the author of the post
Absolutely in accordance with your thinking.
It is not necessary, nor is it our moral obligation to others, they themselves have to be responsible for the computing they use, that would be an unnecessary waste of resources, if they like their system so much then they hold on, I use Linux together with Windows because they force me to send proprietary formats, then since they are so totalitarian that they assume the consequences of what they have, life is not a rosy color to be solving problems for everyone.
In this case it is not totalitarianism, but simply that the vast majority use what they use, which is different.
Teue Story and +1 for your comment.
At the business level, morality does not count for much, but ethics (Business).
Unfortunately for many, especially Spanish speakers (It will be a matter of ideology in the personal, culture in general or what do I know), we care little, the excellence in our work, that is reflected in the level and quality of life.
You can put a thousand examples of how malware could result in hours or days lost for a company, but surely there will be no lack of those that say:
-Best! A few days off, I do not care about the economic losses of my source of employment.
And on the moral, I do not even want to imagine the type of person who is someone who does not feel obliged to safeguard the PC and information, his mother and say that it is the woman's problem, for choosing x and y system.
My mom is 73 years old and uses Linux. You don't need antivirus either 😉
Thank you for exemplifying my comment.
Let's hope she doesn't need social security, vaccinations, or they don't smoke around her, it's her problem anyway. 😉
In the country where you live there is none of that, there is no social security or a medical plan that works. One lives by miracle. And smoking because she has been smoking since she was 12 (yes, since she was 12) so at this point it doesn't matter much. My contribution fee was to install Linux on it. That is, instead of keeping him "vice" using winbugs I showed him the light and now he's happy with it. You see? The solution is not to patch the problems but to provide alternatives. If you keep cleaning people out of viruses then they will never stop using windows and they will see Linux as a Lysol and you as a janitor who cleans their garbage. I think that's not the idea if you want to help them.
Well now knowing your context, your way of thinking is understandable, but it is still inadmissible.
Because that "Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day." Teach a man to fish, and he will eat his whole life. " only applies where there is sea.
There are people who (for whatever reason) cannot use more than proprietary software, and they should also have the right to secure computing. If their computers are infected thanks to a memory that we pass on to them, we have a percentage of fault.
It is as if I give my mother a drink from a cup that had contact with the chickenpox virus, just because I am already immune.
(Now use my mother, surely yours would turn out to be immune even to AIDS)
If you don't have the ability to abstract an example a bit and arrange things to justify your self-centeredness and apathy for helping others based only on your bad luck, then it hurts.
I know people who here where we do have social security (which is not a big deal) tell me that children with cancer should not be helped with money from the state, but anyway, everyone judges according to what they have lived.
Luckily, social solidarity is a topic well explained in the principles of free software.
HAHAHA. I see that you are in bad shape. Merry Christmas friend. Or Happy Holidays if it's not politically correct for you.
@Giskard
Not at all, mate, it is easy to get confused, because through the letters there is no intonation or corporal expression (that coupled with my little eloquence)
Greetings and have a good time.
Take the same as mine 🙂
Could it be a virus or some type of malware that, opened from NOVA, affects Windows? If the answer is yes, I suppose that it would be necessary given the nuances that you comment. If the answer is no (which I'm afraid it is), shouldn't the antivirus have the Windows partition and that's it? Lowering the performance of the system so that Windows has a double protection (antivirus in NOVA and I suppose that antivirus in Windows) seems excessive to me, the work that Windows antivirus does. From my point of view totally without deep knowledge, of course.
[+1]
It seems to me a good implementation, in servers, companies, schools and institutions where many users use the same computer. Perhaps it is worth making use of an antivirus on our own linux system, so we help the people with whom we have contact, because they are precisely people that some can help and they are unknown to us. Obviously, it would be necessary to see the disposition of resources to be able to allocate them for an antivurus. But that's fine with me, security never hurts
Well personally, I always have something present .. Although right now we do not have viruses, it does not mean that we will never have them, although due to the multitude of distributions and systems its implementation and dissemination is very difficult, while the number of GNU users increases / Linux, viruses will appear on distros such as Ubuntu. Why? because no system is free of bugs, although they are resolved faster in some than in others and also because antivirus companies are the first to remove viruses for themselves to have the cure (circle of dependency) they have the drug and the clinic healing. 🙂
regards
A virus must replicate itself. Under this concept, Posix systems can NOT have viruses. They may have malware. All you want! But already there the fault is in the idiocy of the user to give permissions to things. And even so, the damage is most likely contained at the level of what the user has access to. But, by definition, viruses in Linux do not exist and will not be. You do not believe me? Google a bit and you will see. In fact there is a study out there of someone who tried to make one and explains how to do it and everything. It is the dumbest virus on the planet because it needs your complete help to be able to function at every step. You almost become yourself with the virus. So no viruses, but malware yes. And the malware doesn't replicate itself.
The term malware applies to any software with malicious intent.
Viruses are also a type of malware that replicates itself.
Although I fully subscribe to what you say, as such, a virus is harmless by now (Even in Windows since its XP version), but we have OTHER types of malware, such as Trojans or worms.
If we keep calling them viruses, it will be out of habit.
I know users that one of the conditions to have Linux is that it had antivirus.
There are journalists (those who "know everything"), who every time they hear something about Linux, they answer "watch out! Linux also has viruses! ». You may not have seen a Linux on a laptop or desktop, but the tagline is well known
BULLSHIT.
The insecurity industry strikes back.
That's true. In addition, this encourages the user to make more layer 8 errors and thus make them fall into ignorance. As simple as that.
Theirs is that in these times all operating systems carry their corresponding antivirus. There are more and more viruses oriented to platforms other than Windows. A few years ago there were no Mac viruses, and now there are. Linux should come with your antivirus SW. Cheers
Regarding free OS 'such as those derived from open source BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD) and / or GNU / Linux distributions, the answer that may exist to any exploit and / or bug is solved with an update that contains the fix made directly made from the source code and / or a patch that solves said bug. In the case of closed source UNIX-like OS such as OSX, the response time is usually quite long, since the error can go months without being detected.
In the case of Windows, the exploits are in most cases intentional, in order to form dependence towards its users before an antivirus.
I am using one antivirus for GNU / Linux and two for Windows. The one I'm using the most is called SCAV, and the one that complements that in my partition with Windows, is the Microsoft Security Essentials.
If I have ever had to download something in linux, and then install it in Windows I have used an online antivirus, so I did not have to install anything. Of course I did not get to scan any large file that we say.
If each one uses what they want, but each one has to assume the consequences of their decisions and not wait for others to take the 'chestnuts out of the fire'.
Regarding the comment that windows is susceptible to viruses, that is not so ... since windows enabled the use of auc (the brilliant "apes" who love layer 8 only disable it-making analogy is to give sudo to everything) in the accounts the "viruses" are no longer viruses, because they ask permission from the user, so it is rather a maleware. At the moment the problems in windows are of escalation of permissions, when using sources of doubtful origin, the same that happens in the most popular of linux, android; Well, more than one of them has been sneaked a "malicious" application that does little of what it promises, or simply nothing, but fills you with advertising and even downloads other apps on its own, after granting it permissions (that damn little sign that appears after tighten install)
Looking at the public to whom this distribution is directed, personally I think they should implement it. It is not too much to do periodic scans and from time to time realize that everything is fine in our system.
Regards!
Effectively. There is the possibility of receiving an infected email that does not affect our Linux and that we forward to friends and family who when using Windows are infected and damaged. Taking into account that Linux "spends" little on the machine, it doesn't hurt to have that barrier.
totally agree with zyxx….
I don't see it necessary the truth
Very good contribution . Is appreciated
In linux antivirus ?.
The only thing I have needed / used is Clamav in Courier ...
for daily use it is totally absurd, not being servers… it is absurd and spending resources to spend