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Antivirus options for Linux -- anyone have experience with Sophos or ESET?

the_tortoise

Well-Known Member
V.I.P Member
Has anyone used Sophos? Specifically the free antivirus for Linux? What are your thoughts about / experiences of it?

Has anyone used ESET? Specifically NOD32 for Linux? What are your thoughts about / experiences of it?
 
I can't say much about Linux, unfortunately, although I do know that ESET is a really good company. On my Windows I was choosing between ESET NOD 32 and Kaspersky and found out ESET to be just as alert and yet much more proficient(less use of the memory). Never heard of the Sophos, however.

Apologies for this only part-way answer.
 
I can't say much about Linux, unfortunately, although I do know that ESET is a really good company. On my Windows I was choosing between ESET NOD 32 and Kaspersky and found out ESET to be just as alert and yet much more proficient(less use of the memory). Never heard of the Sophos, however.

Apologies for this only part-way answer.

No apologies necessary -- I really appreciate your answer. :)

People's opinions and experiences with either company, or with their software on other operating systems, are helpful to me -- especially when I can't find much info/opinion about their software on Linux systems, specifically.

AV-Comparatives did testing on anti-virus programs for Linux in 2015 (ESET did really well in those, better than Sophos), but a lot can change in a few years.
 
ESET is good, but I don't run any av on my desktop.

As far as I know there are no known threats for opensuse which is what I use.

I rarely install software that's not from repos, my email is Gmail business, so that's scanned.

I do worry a bit, but I feel more secure on Linux without av than on windows with av.
 
I installed a trial version of ESET onto my Fedora system last night....the activation of the trial license didn't work at all and there was no option to try it again. Also my poor old computer went from needing a few moments to load the OS to needing 10 minutes, so I uninstalled ESET. Perhaps on a different OS and/or a newer machine it would have gone better.

ESET is good, but I don't run any av on my desktop.

As far as I know there are no known threats for opensuse which is what I use.

I rarely install software that's not from repos, my email is Gmail business, so that's scanned.

I do worry a bit, but I feel more secure on Linux without av than on windows with av.

I use Fedora and Ubuntu right now. I could try installing ESET onto the Ubuntu system but I suspect the slowing will be even worse, since it already takes longer to start up than Fedora.

My choices for an OS are limited because my computer is quite old and the majority of Linux distributions have already completely cut support for my hardware.

I suppose I am pretty cautious.... I would just be less worried if I had AV software installed.
 
That would be a big concern to me as well. The performance "drag" of AV software. Some products amount to "bloatware" and just slow down overall performance of an operating system. Not acceptable.
 
That would be a big concern to me as well. The performance "drag" of AV software. Some products amount to "bloatware" and just slow down overall performance of an operating system. Not acceptable.

Just to be clear, I'm not sure the problem with slowing is a problem with the ESET AV, per se. (NOD32 actually seems fairly spartan, as AV software goes -- it's just antivirus, doesn't even have a firewall let alone all the non-essential system tools that AV security suites tend to have these days).

I am thinking the extreme slowing might be something that would happen with any AV software because my hardware is so old and has such limited RAM and processing speed compared to modern machines.
 
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The trouble with av is that it runs on file access so slows down any pc it runs on. Add in the bloat you get with most software and you'll see a noticeable performance degradation.

You could run clam av on a schedule? I think that mostly searches for Windows threats stored in Linux though.

Most Web servers are Linux, and they would probably just run clam av I'd think.

Most important aspects are fully updated OS, good browser, good browsing habits, not installing from websites.

The most common infection vector is an infected website installing malware. It's hard to imagine that working on Linux as you would need root prevelidges to install, and each malware would only work for one distro.

Malware is a numbers game, as to install enough to make money you have expose lots of machines, then infect a percentage of them. If you focus on Linux it's going to be a very small number that get infected, if any at all.

Go for Windows or Mac and it's easy. Many people have no av or its out of date, out of date OS and browsers, no password, running as admin, willing to trust sudden "your pc is infected pop ups", much easier to scam.

Interesting discussion here, although it's mostly about servers.

Does linux servers gets affected with ransomware
 
You could run clam av on a schedule? I think that mostly searches for Windows threats stored in Linux though.

ClamAV didn't do all that well in the AV-Comparatives test results from 2015 (it caught 66.1% of Linux malware and only 15.3% of Windows malware) so it wasn't top of my list, but then maybe it has improved since then. And maybe those weren't the most accurate test results in 2015 (they're just all I have to go on).

If it uses fewer system resources then maybe it's the best choice in my case -- even if it's not the best of them in terms of the amount of malware it catches, that certainly doesn't make it useless.

Most important aspects are fully updated OS, good browser, good browsing habits, not installing from websites.

I check for updates at least once a day and I use Firefox.

Not sure how good my browing habits are but I try to be cautious.

I mostly just use the official distribution repos but when I don't, I stick to well-known and generally reputable software direct from project servers (like things from the GNU servers), I pay attention to download addresses, validate checksums on downloads before doing anything with them, avoid unencrypted connections, look at SSL certificate details.


Thanks for the link, it was interesting and reassuring to read.
 

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