7 of the best anti-virus apps for Linux

Pretty much every Linux user thinks they're immune to viruses, but they're wrong. Recently, malware was found hidden inside an innocuous looking Gnome theme from a reputable site.

Users who installed the theme also got several scripts installed as root that were designed to attack internet targets, but it could easily have been much worse.

You see, the problem with thinking that Linux is immune is that sooner or later, something like this happens, and you'll have no protection. Yes, 99% of the time you won't need it. Maybe even 99.9% of the time. But if a virus checker saves you just once a year, we think that's a good enough reason to install one.

Of course, there are other good reasons, not least that you don't want to be blamed in the flame-fest that would result if you accidentally forwarded a virus to your Windows-loving friends. For seconds, even if the virus doesn't affect you, wouldn't you at least like to know that it had somehow made its way on to your precious Linux box?

For the most part, we expect virus checkers to run without us noticing that they're there, to consume no resources and just get on with things. Extra points are awarded to software that comes close to this ideal, while they're deducted for difficult installs, weak documentation and poor performance.

Many of the clients on test make use of Dazuko, which is a kernel module designed to give on-access notifications to userland software – so when you open a file, the module passes the details to any service that wants to know. Some of the checkers rely on an old version of Dazuko; we've made a note of these in the review text.

AVG: free long-established virus scanning for Linux

Products bearing the AVG name have a reasonable history in antivirus software, stretching back to 1992. Linux/Unix systems were only added to the lineup in version 7.5 and now lag behind the Windows version (at 9.0), having only had a few updates.

Installing the free client is pretty straightforward, no matter what system you're using, because there are packages freely available in RPM, Deb and tarball formats. Installing the tarball might be a slight pain, but as it's binary, there's no need to worry about compiling this, that and the other.

Unlike many of the apps here, there's no GUI for this software. It's designed to be run as a system daemon to scan your files on schedule or on demand. There's an option for on-demand checking with the Dazuko kernel module.

Starting the daemon is easy if you have some sysadmin skills, and it can be configured to run at boot.

In terms of speed, AVG Free did pretty well, but perhaps at the expense of being thorough. Surprisingly, the software failed to find the zipped versions of the virus test file. Since the test file has been around for years, this is pretty inexcusable – it shouldn't be at all hard to find. The only reasonable explanation is that perhaps the software is misconfigured.

As part of our tests, we do the minimum amount of configuration to get the program to run. In a production environment, you might want to investigate the docs and the various settings, but even if you did, AVG Free's documentation is scantier than a minuscule bikini.

Because of the difficulty in making sure the system is configured and working, as well as the poor results in finding viruses, this wouldn't be one we could recommend for desktop use.

AVG Free
Version: 8.5
Website: http://free.avg.com
Price: Free

It performs so poorly and comes with such minimal documentation that it's not worth it, even if it is free.

Rating: 2/10