Hey guys, I've been using linux for a while now, well actually, I've been back and forth from windows to linux because of some application issues, but now after setting up my Xubuntu and all the software I need, how about firewalls or antivirus if needed? does anyone can hand me some knowledge about any setting up a security measures for my machine?
thanks,
Virus' as far as I know aren't really an issue on Linux, well, not yet anyway there are a few but IIRC most of them are fairly harmless and can usually be dealt with quite easily.
Most linux distro's should come with a firewall installed afaik, there are tools similar to the Windows Control Panel where you can find the firewall settings.
I've never really bothered to do much about it on my Linux box, infact I usually switch off nearly all the safety measures.
The most important thing, never ever run programs/desktop as admin or root unless you have to, don't change important files ownership from root ownership to regular user ownership. Oh, and never do sudo rm -rf / it's a terrible life choice.
But honestly, there are so many good linux specific forums out there, especially about the various *buntu's that finding this information on Google shouldn't be very much work at all.
Hope this sort of helped, been a while since I played with *buntu
Avast for linux is pretty good, and there are many firewall programs, as said already most come with the distro you are using
i would install wine and load malwarebytes on linux. then full scan you pc you will find things on the first scan just white list them, they are part of wine. and now you can make sure you dont infect windows.
ubuntu comes with a firewall pre installed there is a gui for it on the software center, Firewall configuration i beleive, it adds a gui for ufw which is ubuntus pre installed firewall, it also has pre installed anti virus the gui for it is called clam tk i beleive, you should dowload that from source forge to get the latest version.
Oh, I see, actually I saw the firewal configuration in the Ubuntu Software Center, but didint play with it yet, thanks.
Btw, nice profile image, My favorite anime since I was a kid, until now.
Bump
I use clamAV not so much for linux but for the windows machines in the house so they won't spread viruses to other machines.
Hurd immunity.
I use Eset Anti-virus on my desktop.
Also used clamAV but I was using it for file/media server for the other windows machines in the house so I could just toss it on that and not have to worry. Then I switched all the other computers in the house to Linux to save me the hastle. Only problem I had was when my nephew decided to install a hacked client onto the computer, I spent hours and hours getting drunk that day and he comes in and tells me Minecraft won't work. Took me seconds too fix it. Told him if he wanted to cheat to do it himself, I mean FFS I spent years teaching him how to do it and he knows java.
No antivirus is required, you can install one on your machine if its a server hosting files for windows pcs in attempt to cleanse the mess they bring.
But otherwise it's not necessary, all applications require user authentication to install, nothing is going to install itself without you telling it to.
Ofc this doesnt concern stuff like web browser vulnerabillities, but that can be dealt with with extensions.
**As @Arctis stated,
There is no need to use an anti-virus on a Linux system. You can't accidentally install anything. You can actively install something you shouldn't have but best practices is not to install anything outside of the official repositories unless you know for a fact they are safe and trusted. (there are a few examples where this exists such as Google Chrome, TeamViewer and etc.)
Linux doesn't get viruses much at all but there are people who inaccurately claim that Linux doesn't have viruses ONLY because it isn't popular enough and those people are completely mistaken. Linux users rarely get viruses because the underlying structure of the system makes it very hard to get infected by anything unless the user goes through with the install manually.
Scenario #1:
Issue: User gets an email of a virus and mistakenly downloads the virus.
Solution: No Need, just by downloading it can't do anything, you have to install it also.
Scenario #2:
Issue: User clicks one of those spam ads that show up on websites and downloads a virus.
Solution: No Need, you still have to manually install it.
Scenario #3:
Issue: User downloads an application that they really want, but that application also bundles another application like a spam toolbar with it.
Solution: No Need, because that actually does not happen on Linux. It is very common on Windows but basically never happens in Linux.
Scenario #4:
Issue: User accidentally downloads a virus that was made for Windows.
Solution: No Need, It will do absolutely nothing because it can not run on Linux and therefore even if you tried to install and run it, you couldn't. You could in fact leave it on your computer forever and nothing would ever happen to it. (although you could connect to a Windows machine and infect it because Windows is trash for security.)
Linux has security measures built-in to stop accidental installs and therefore it is incredibly unlikely that you will get a virus on Linux unless you manually install it yourself.
While this is true if you are hosting services, word press for example. It can be exploited.
Make sure you have good firewall settings and package monitoring. And never run Apache as root, I have seen people do it and it makes me a sad panda.