Best free firewall and antivirus for Linux?

Lady_K

Granddaughter has had a new Acer notebook for Christmas but it has Linux on it, I havent seen a Linux system before and niether has anyone else in the family so any tips on using it would be helpful. She is using it without a firewall or any antivirus on it at the moment so is there any recommended ones for Linux systems please?

lewt

does it not have it on already ? have a look in the tabs on the topof the desktop screen

fermi

If you are behind a hardware firewall (router etc......) then there isn't much point really.

I don't bother on this laptop running Linux.

bat999

Most Linux users, including me, don't use any firewall or antivirus programs.
That's because Linux already has a firewall built into it.
And viruses are written for Windows systems, they don't affect Linux machines.
:cool:

thomas01155

Avast do a linux edition antivirus see here http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-for-linux-workstation.html

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ubuntu-63/does-ubuntu-come-with-a-firewall-549332/
"By default iptables are setup for restrictive inbound traffic and permissive outbound traffic. All options can be configured from the command line but using Firestarter (a GUI frontend) makes it much easier. Firestarter documentation is here: http://www.fs-security.com/docs.php"

Lady_K

I cant see anything on the desktop to do with firewall or antivirus, her mum tried to download avg on it and said it downloaded but she cant find where it went but I wasnt sure if avg works with Linux anyway.

thomas01155

You should be glad AVG doesn't work with Linux :rotfl: imagine that. You don't really need a antivirus as other people have said.

bat999

thomas01155 wrote: »

Avast do a linux edition antivirus see here http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-for-linux-workstation.html

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ubuntu-63/does-ubuntu-come-with-a-firewall-549332/
"By default iptables are setup for restrictive inbound traffic and permissive outbound traffic. All options can be configured from the command line but using Firestarter (a GUI frontend) makes it much easier. Firestarter documentation is here: http://www.fs-security.com/docs.php"

That's the iptables firewall that's already built into the Linux kernel.
There is a version of AVG antivirus that is made for Linux. I used to have it installed on my machine, but it isn't worth bothering with (imho). I removed it.

thomas01155

:O there is oh its only 7.5 wonder if they will release the 8.0 version for it

jasonwatkins

yeah, to add to what everyone has already said, you don't need anti virus for linux machines.

the very nature of the file system and the fact that you need root permissions to actually write anything to the important parts anyway means that a virus probably wouldn't work even if you downloaded one.

Lady_K

thomas01155 wrote: »

Avast do a linux edition antivirus see here http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-for-linux-workstation.html

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/ubuntu-63/does-ubuntu-come-with-a-firewall-549332/

"By default iptables are setup for restrictive inbound traffic and permissive outbound traffic. All options can be configured from the command line but using Firestarter (a GUI frontend) makes it much easier. Firestarter documentation is here: http://www.fs-security.com/docs.php"

Will she be ok then just leaving it as it is? Shes just 15 and really wouldnt be bothered to keep up with any settings etc all she is interested in is getting on msn and probably do some homework.

Where are the settings for the inbuilt firewall?