best anti-virus

[Martin]

The big reason is that, unless you are foolish enough to log in as root, a virus can't do anything to your computer.

[rizzix]

yea, but its not too hard to grab hold of the root password. just take advantage of security holes in the one of the numerous programs available for linux.. and you're done for. (now dont give me bs, that such holes do not exist.. there are present.. and they do get fixed before they are abused.. but thats only cuz linux isin;t all that popular.)

either way.. your not going to store your data as root.. it most likely would be in you home directory.. if you dont employ a good backup system you will have a problem when a virus deletes your won precious personal data files.

also.. how secure are the distros available now-a-days? huh? they try to make things easier to use.. as a result the drop down degree of permissions on various directories etc. opening holes for viruses to settle.

its not really all that safe you see.

[wtd]

The biggest benefit is not technical but social. There are still huge numbers of "experts" on the Windows side of the world who will happily recommend software that's been known to carry malware for years.

Other communities don't tolerate this. If a piece of software does something bad, it gets trashed pretty quickly, and if you obtain software from reputable sources, you can pretty much count on them removing such software from their repositories.

[Andy]

i've been using norton for 4 years, and it kinda sux.. i mean the av itself isnt bad, but it uses way way too much system resources.. i now use psc-cillin with zone alarm

[cool dude]

i use zone alarm and norton anti-virus. i don't know why u people hate norton so much but i find it to be good at finding and preventing viruses on my computer. it does use a lot of resources but i find it still good, i just hope thats not the reason my booting time slows down because of norton.

[md]

Hmmm... maybe it's jsut that I have lots of free resources, but norton isn't all that bad on my computer... But then I've yet to use my swap space... EVER...

[betaflye]

Martin wrote:

The big reason is that, unless you are foolish enough to log in as root, a virus can't do anything to your computer.

It could trash /home/username which I'd call pretty serious. Or just boot into a livecd and chroot into your installation after mounting the partitions and have some fun.

I use Avast! Home Edition on all the Windows machines here. Works great and is free for home use.