Reliable, Free Anti-Virus Software? 586
oahazmatt writes "Some time ago my wife was having severe issues on her laptop. (A Dell Inspiron, if that helps.) I eventually found the cause to be McAfee, which took about an hour to remove fully. I installed AVG on her system to replace McAfee, but we have since found that AVG is causing problems with her laptop's connection to our wireless network. She's not thrilled about a wired connection as the router is on the other end of the house. We're looking for some good, open-source or free personal editions of anti-virus software. So, who on Slashdot trusts what?" When school required a Windows laptop, I used Clam AV, and the machine seemed to do as well as most classmates'. What have you found that works?
Avast (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.avast.com
Free for personal use.
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I second that motion.
I've found people's computers with viruses that commercial softwares have overlooked. I uninstall their paid product (usually with objections), and install the free version of Avast. It catches the viruses, throws warnings about bad things still crawling around, and in the end they're virus free and protected.
More than that, it's what I use on my Windows machine, which is happily virus free, even though I do things that I advise people not
avast the best free one with no lock down like avg (Score:5, Informative)
avast the best free one with no lock down like avg8
http://www.avast.com/ [avast.com]
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I second this. I've been using avast for years with no problems.
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AntiMalware Malwarebytes has Rogue Remover which I highly recommend. Save hrs of work.
Some rogues need to be removed manually though. Just keep it updated and it will be fine.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/rogueremover.php [malwarebytes.org]
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I agree on Avast! if you have to be free, but my personal favorite is Eset's NOD32 (www.eset.com). $40 MSRP (but you can find it cheaper if you look around). This is the most efficient (very very small memory footprint) and effective antivirus I have ever used. We use Symantec Corporate where I work (but are switching once our subscription runs out) and this has picked up several viruses on PCs that Symantec missed. Not to mention the fact that Symantec likes to do in-depth scanning every once in a whil
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Most likely the console (the server that monitors and manages the clients) is scheduled to order a scan every once in a while. You should ask your admin to knock it off or reschedule it for a better time.
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I will also throw in a nod for Avast. I've used just about every free virus scanner out there and Avast seems to work about the best. I used to love AVG, but it has become the epitome of bloatware as of late. Avira is a close second, but the daily nag screen got to be a bit annoying. Avast found viruses that no other scanner had found on files that were years old. It did seem to have some false positives, but to be honest, I've always erred on the side of caution.
Re:avast the best free one with no lock down like (Score:4, Interesting)
I would recommend Avira AntiVir [1]. It is free for personal use too. The was most impressed of the speed. I used Avira AntiVir all the time before I moved to Linux.
[1] http://www.free-av.de/en/index.html [free-av.de]
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however, make a backup before installing it. It may be different now, but it was a bitch to remove from my old box.
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Seconded, though I prefer defence in depth. My suggestion:
Avast (Home Edition) + Spyware Doctor (Google Pack) + Threatfire.
Free for personal home use (read the fine print for anything else), they complement each other, have automatic updates, and play nice on XP and Vista. Tweak the settings to your (and user's) preference, remember to register Avast, and then you can pretty much forget about them.
Note: Threatfire 4 has only just been released; if you have problems I suggest trying 3.5.
Use the Wind
I'd go with Clam (Clam Win) (Score:4, Interesting)
Avast (Score:5, Informative)
I second the mention of ClamWin (Score:5, Insightful)
When school required a Windows laptop, I used Clam AV
I second the mention of ClamWin. The biggest missing feature in ClamWin is scanning every file on fopen(), and that's what usually causes the resource hogging behavior that some people believe to be typical of antivirus. In my experience, a computer user really doesn't need real-time operation unless he's looking at pr0n (erotic web sites), downloading w4r3z (infringing copies of proprietary commercial software), or doing something comparably dangerous. A weekly full scan is enough.
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Or setup the user to run as limited user. You wouldnt let your wife run as root 24/7 would you? Windows is the same way. Limited user + clamav (or no AV) is more than enough.
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A weekly full scan? That's closing the barn door after the horses fled.
Not exactly. My copy of Firefox 3 detected ClamWin and set itself up to call ClamWin every time a download completes, whether it be from a software download site or from my web mail.
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Moonsecure (Score:2, Interesting)
Ran across Moonsecure recently. GPL'd AV software supposedly. Never used it myself though.
like wearing a condom 24/7 (Score:2)
My experiences with windows AV is pretty lame. At one job, I had to deal with huge numbers of reads and writes to the disk. The anti-virus software (Symantec I think) would bog things down, trying to check all these writes until the drive plain died.
We did not reinstall it when the new drive arrived and there were no problems.
That sort of cemented my idea that AV software was mostly worthless. Even with updates, it was still out of date where it mattered, and is such a resource hog as to make using windows
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If you are a windows user, just browse smart, don't open up any unneeded services and get your ass behind a firewall. Oh, and backup your stuff periodically.
I agree. I've never run an AV on windows. I've had some spyware problems in the past, but with some responsible browsing habits, there shouldn't be any reason to "contract" that stuff.
I've never understood how people accumulate all the shit that they do when they finally ask someone to "fix" their computer once it is unusable.
NOD32 (Score:2)
Try this: no antivirus (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm serious. Stop doing the things that put you at risk for viruses and you won't have to run anti-virus. I don't run anti-virus or anti-spyware software on my computer and I've never had a problem. Occasionally, just to verify that I'm doing the right thing, I boot from a BartPE [wikipedia.org] Windows CD and run anti-virus and anti-spyware tools against my hard drive. They never find anything bad. The last time I had a virus was in 1989 on my Amiga 500.
Re:Try this: no antivirus (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that you're right, except that you're ignoring one source of problems: stupid people. Stupid people can't "stop doing things that put [them] at risk for viruses" because they aren't smart enough to understand the difference between risky behavior and safe behavior. Even if you explain it to them, they won't understand it, and they'll forget your instructions.
Ok, to be fair, it's not just stupid people. There are smart people who simply don't have the computer or security expertise necessary to be able to understand the difference between a safe download and a risky one. They don't understand, and they have other things to do besides spending all their time learning, investigating, and figuring it out.
For those people, it helps to secure the system through various methods, one of which might be an AV program.
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What a pretty colour the sky must be in your world. "Stop doing things that put you at risk for viruses".
So that'd be unplugging your computer and never using it then. Seriously, what kind of crazy logic are you using here? There is ALWAYS a risk, however minimal.
Even if you're security conscious, you can wind up infected. I did recently. I downloaded something from a legitimate website. The site had been hacked and the exe trojaned, but there was no evidence to indicate this. And both Clam and A-Squared fl
Check http://www.av-test.org/ (Score:2)
You can check some of the ones listed at http://www.virusbtn.com/news/2008/09_02 [virusbtn.com], which also qualifies them a bit!
I personally use Avira AntiVir and like it! I started with the free edition but quickly upgraded, it's pretty cheap and might as well support them...
PCTools Threatfire (Score:2)
While not OSS, Threatfire and FireWall Plus from PCTools are both free for personal use.
AVG generates too many false positives, and has a really lame (sorry but it is) alert graphic and noise.
ClamAV works well provided you don't want the real-time monitoring, which is why I only use it as a portable app for disinfecting.
Avast is also a good choice if not anything special.
Free for personal use (Score:4, Informative)
I use Avira AV [free-av.com] on the WinDOZE systems at my house.
It's free for personal use, and companies have to get a site license...
Did you contact the AVG people? (Score:2)
"I installed AVG on her system to replace McAfee, but we have since found that AVG is causing problems with her laptop's connection to our wireless network"
Just wondering if you contacted the AVG people. I know that, as a free (as in beer.. sort of) software user you're not likely to get priority support, but I'm sure they would like to know -why- their product appears to be messing with her wireless internet connection. I understand that you feel like it might not be worth messing with, but on the other
Flu? (Score:2)
Antivir (Score:2)
I recommend Avira Antivir Personal [free-av.com]. Very Lean, fast, customizable and through.
Only problems is it pops up an Ad to upgrade to the pay version every time you download an update and it can be false positive happy when turned up to it's fullest settings and definitions, but otherwise it's one of the best scanners I've seen.
No antivirus catches everything. (Score:5, Informative)
The most effective methods I've seen is the behavioral and heuristic based systems in Kaspersky and Norton AV 2009's SONAR. SONAR may not catch it on execution but it catches registry entries and it's caught 99% of the bot samples I have when they try to call home. The new versions are also fairly light on system resources.
It may not be the popular opinion but if you really don't want to worry about malware then look at OS X or Linux. Yes there is some malware out there but in comparison it's a minute fraction of a percent of the number for Windows based systems.
OT: Interested in Malware research (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a network engineer by trade with responsibility for my company's firewalls, IPS sensors, Network Behavior Detection / Netflow tools, etc. Your post piqued my interest for one of my backburner science projects: a malware research "lab". My company has multiple licenses for VMWare ESX server, VMWare Lab Manager, and the like, and I'd really like to create an environment where I can let specific malware run "freely" and see how well (or more likely, how poorly) my aforementioned firewalls and IPS sensors
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Best AV/App-Watch/Firewall for 64 Bit Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm trying to move from 32-bit XP to 64-bit vista, and one of the things keeping me from making the switch is trying to find a good 64-bit virus program.
I'm using ZoneAlarm on XP and one of the things I like most about it is the applications watching and firewall.
Having it authorize net access and system access is a feature I find very nice to have.
Unfortunately, it looks like ZoneAlarm is not in the 64-bit game.
Correction: They were beta testing a 64-bit windows version sometime ago but have dropped it completely with no apparent mention of trying again.
Currently for firewall on Vista, I use the built-in firewall with full deny by default and then configure applications to go through on a one-by-one basis.
But I really liked being notified when apps tried to do any potentially dangerous activities like run each time the system is loaded or modify the hosts file, etc.
So anybody got a good replacement on 64-bit Vista for paranoid users like myself?
Thanks in advance for any replies.
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Try Comodo 64 bits, it's free:
http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/ [comodo.com]
However, I had a problem on my XP 64, because my bandwidth slowed down a lot due to this program.
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I run Vista X64 Ultimate.
I LOVE ESET NOD32.
--Toll_Free
f-prot still in business (Score:2)
f-prot is still in business and seems to do fairly well. I think they do still have a free version, but their core home version is something like $19.95 for a two year subscription covering install on up to 5 family PCs. It always does reasonably well on the comparison tests (given that no AV will catch every piece of malware out there) and doesn't slow the system down much if at all.
sPh
PCTools and Google Pack (Score:2)
PC Tools has a free Antivirus [pctools.com] at the bottom of that page.
Google Pack [google.com] has a free Norton Security Scan which is Norton Antivirus Lite with no autoprotect but it does scheduled scans and allows an upgrade to the full version. Also Spyware Doctor which scans for spyware, adware, and rootkits, and allows an upgrade to the full version.
Observations: AVG vs Avast (Score:5, Informative)
AVG good stuff:
AVG bad stuff
---
Avast good stuff:
Avast bad stuff:
---
At the end of the day, I went with Avast. Stability and low performance impact is more important to me than a fancy GUI. Clueless end-users disagree though, and actually want AVG back inspite of the stability issues. So the GUI really made a difference for them. They simply felt more "at home" with AVG.
Direct links for both products:
AVG Antivirus Free Version Download [avg.com] and Wikipedia Description [wikipedia.org].
Avast Antivirus Free version download [avast.com] and Wikipedia description [wikipedia.org].
brgds
- Jesper
(Experience is from: 3x Vista computers with reasonable hardware specs, and 2 older Windows XP computers)
Firefox. (Score:2)
The various people I've managed to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox generally haven't experienced a virus since, despite not running anti-virus software. In particular if they also stop using Outlook Express.
In contrast, I know several instances of people getting viruses even though they _are_ running Norton or McAfee.
So yes, I recommend not using anti-virus software at all. Just use safer software when you access the internet.
Decompile (Score:4, Funny)
Wireless printer? (Score:4, Interesting)
This might be coming from left field, but your question struck me because I was having exactly the same issue (with exactly the same person, my wife).
Turns out the problem was our HP wireless printer. The drivers were causing network traffic that was causing my wifes computer to slow down. she also has a dell inspiron, but hers is a little old (1gb memory and 1.2ghz cpu).
The hp drivers were causing network traffic over her linksys wireless card, which in turn was using cpu cycles to support the wireless network traffic.
The problem was corrected by turning off the HP printer.
So, if you have a wireless printer, try turning it off.
AVAST, AVIRA and Bit Defender (Score:3, Informative)
AVIRA has the advantage of NEVER needing a free license key renewed but they make you pay for it with an intrusive popup add for AVIRA Pro.
Bit Defender has the smallest RAM footprint of the three but updates are EXCRUCIATING and bog down your machine.
AVAST is the most complete of all of them, has the largest footprint, requires a 14 month free license key and some peculiar incompatibilities with one machine I tried it on, but it's the best of the three in terms of the actual work it does.
AVG is pure bloat at this point, and none of the other "FREE" applications are free - they're DEMOWARE.
Re:You could use (Score:4, Funny)
Linux. Someone had to say it.
Yeah. Frankly though, all I'm thinking about at the moment (this being Saturday night and all) as that free Linux beer you guys are always talking about. How does it stack up against the other imports?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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> I have used both on many customers machines and they work quite well.
Isn't that bad for business though?
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"I have used both on many customers machines"
I read as I have used on both customers and machines"
Which lead me to think, wow, Anti-virus for users, now THATS a good idea!
A small brain will suffice, said the mouse....
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No, and besides being open source, ClamAV is rather unobtrusive, which is a feature I like. It doesn't get in the way. If I want it to scan something on-demand, it will through the shell extension it installs. I don't want something scanning every damn executable I click on.
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Clam is great. I've been using it for a year or so now and it's caused the least issues of anything.
I also run A Squared as a trojan scanner, but it proudly proclaimed a file to be trojan free recently, and when I ran it proceeded to wreck my computer leading to having to use bloody system restore.
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As a matter of technical humor, you do realize that one of the first things a trojan tends to infect is your system restore, right?
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Re:Clam AV (Score:5, Insightful)
ClamAV, as it stands, does not do on-access scanning. I quite dislike the way the Win32 version (ClamWin) installs a little Clam icon into the system tray, as a false sense of security is worse than no security at all.
MoonSecure is a scanner/heuristics engine that uses Clam's signatures and does perform on-access scanning but, when I last tried it, it had "issues".
Avast is my current recommendation of the freebies for personal use, followed by Avira, if you can stand the constant nagging about upgrading to paid versions. Avira's detection rate, last I looked, was slightly better than Avast's but the nag screens are a bone of contention. Also have a look at Comodo's offerings. Note that none of these are free software, just free to use. MoonSecure is GPL'd and may have become a little better since I tried it, so it may be worth a shot if freedom matters to you.
Re:Clam AV (Score:4, Interesting)
I NEVER run background scanning on a virus program. It's a needless system overhead. When I get something new that might be suspicious, I simply run it on that specific program.
Only time I ever got a virus on the PC was about nine years ago when the virus program I used was running in the background, and let the CIH virus through.
Not to mention the many MANY issues virus programs cause with games. First thing any support message will tell you is make sure your anti-virus is disabled.
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I never did when I ran it either. I just tired of the system overhead. Plus I recently got infected by something which got past both A-Squared and Clamwin when I scanned it, so even running those in the background would have been pointless.
And while you may not have had antivirus interfere with a game, there are cases where it does. For the LIFE of me I can't remember what the game was (it was earlier this year), but having antivirus running was the explicit cause of the problem and turning if off was the s
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Re:PEBKAC (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. When I run MS Windows (not very often if I can help it), I never use anti-virus. Indeed, I consider it a waste of time and money (not to mention system resources).
Of course, you should always make sure you have a working firewall before connecting to the Internet. I find that the built in MS Windows firewall works well enough, so long as it is enabled.
Then, make sure not to run MSIE (at all except on sites you control, and even then...), instead run an alternative (Firefox is popular for some reason, Opera I've heard is good, not that I use it). Another email client (instead of MS Outlook Express or MS Outlook) is also a must if you are using POP or IMAP.
As also mentioned, don't download and run random programs from the web. You have to know how to evaluate the trustworthiness or otherwise of the website. (One thing I love about Ubuntu is that there are so many programs in the repositories, I haven't downloaded a program from a website in over a year. Want a game, fire up Synaptic and browse the hundreds of free games available. Want a MUD client, there are at least five available. Etc.) Knowing how to evaluate the trustworthiness or otherwise of a website is a mix of common sense and understanding of security. It maybe better to ask your local computer geek before downloading random programs.
So, to sum up:
Considering that most people I know don't do much more with their computers then surf the Web, check their email and use some office software, you don't need much more than what I outlined above.
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The only problem with blocking ALL incoming connections is doing that WILL screw over some programs. I know in the past it's caused issues with Bit Torrent. And while I doubt the people you're talking about would be 1337 w4r3z downloaders, they may be World of Warcraft players at some point, and Blizzard use BT by default to distribute patches.
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Sure, if you want to use Bit Torrent you have to set an exception in your firewall. Except that, I'm guessing that if you're a geek you know how to do that, and most geeks aren't going to be using Bit Torrent. (And even though I'm a geek, I've only ever downloaded one thing using it.)
And using Wireless, the router should have that firewall enabled too. Yup, you have to also forward all requests for the Bit Torrent port to your computer. It isn't that hard for someone who isn't closed minded. (Funny thing, m
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One point - a 'firewall' is a hardware device that stands between insecure systems (such as those running MS platforms) and an untrusted network (such as the Internet). Running some special software *on* a system running an insecure platform doesnt make up for its lack of security.
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Re:Easy (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, I just tried it and not only did it get rid of my virus problem, but it made my computer run faster and more reliably.
Thanks again, anonymous coward!
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The Heron install CD is hopelessly broken and won't dynamically resize the NTFS partition to make room its install because it requires the NTFS partition to be mounted. and it also fucks up your boot sectors and leaves odd garbage on your hard drive.
So go ahead, use Linux. It's stable and reliable as long as you have a Beowulf cluster
For perverse definitions of Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Although I do applaud people moving to, say, Ubuntu (I'm playing with the Live CD and loving it), I don't think this is a Funny -or- Insightful reply any time the topic of viruses/trojans/etc. comes up (and this being Slashdot, it does seem to come up quite often).
Ignoring for a moment that Linux -has- its share of malware ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_computer_viruses [wikipedia.org] , cue "wikipedia is unreliable" and "all of those holes are already patched" and "but it's still much less than on M$ Winblow
Re:For perverse definitions of Easy (Score:5, Funny)
No Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, "Switch to Ubuntu" (or some other linux distribution) may be the perfect answers for this woman, and that would be great - but let's be realistic here and not label that as an easy solution.
Obviously if MS were "easy", this guy would not be posting a question to the this web site. Apparently neither he nor this woman know what to do about MS's glaring security holes.
I do not think that the parent post is saying Ubuntu will be easy. It was just easy for him to think of a solution.
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Except the person posing the original question stated he had to stick to Windows.
Hence, the original, first post, is bullshit. Hence the reason he (probably) posted as anonymous.
--Toll_Free
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Hence, the original, first post, is bullshit. Hence the reason he (probably) posted as anonymous.
No, it is indeed bullshit but that's definitely not the reason he posted anon.
Replying to any post even vaguely related to Windows with a good old "just use Ubuntu" is a guaranteed +5 Informative (usually it deserves either +2 Funny or -1 Troll...)
Re:No Easy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No Easy (Score:4, Funny)
Thank you for the sexual objectification of one of the parties as "that woman".
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They do not make the graphics on your screen "melt" or cause pixelated cartoon charactors to appear and spout lines like "You've been pwnd!".
But I think we can all agree that they totally should.
Re:For perverse definitions of Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring for a moment that Linux -has- its share of malware
There has not yet been a single widespread Linux malware threat of the type that Microsoft Windows software currently faces
Oh, I don't think that Wikipedia's all that bad. *grin*
Honestly, though, I do agree with you. As much as running Linux may be an answer to the "problem", it's not the answer. I've tried converting people over to Linux, and it takes a lot of effort to get their mindset shifted over from Windows to Linux. I've found that if they're apathetic to Windows, they're not going to switch... it takes actual desire on their part to move to something better.
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You could just charge for windows support but give free linux support and see what they choose.
drew
Re:For perverse definitions of Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather not have to deal with the quirks of Linux on someone else's hardware. I liken Linux and Windows to different levels of programming languages. Sure, you can write great code in C and in Java, but there are just so many more ways to shoot yourself in the foot with one that a lot of developers would rather use the other, even if it's slower.
It's not a perfect analogy, but damn, I hate dealing with the quirks of Linux on -my own- machines. I don't want to spend eight hours staring at a terminal entering esoteric commands to fix someone else's.
Re:For perverse definitions of Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only does it take actual desire on their part to move to something better, it takes actual realization that for a lot of people, Linux does not qualify as "better" for their particular usage. It may just be a matter of going into a support forum (something linux users seem to know alot about) and getting some answers as to why AVG is interfering with the wireless connection in the first place. Perhaps submitting a support request with a bug report would be enough to get the problem fixed with the next program update.
What I resent most is a linux junkie who tells a user that "ubuntu is better, therefore thou must switch to my better OS" with no regard for the hassle it is for that user to get acclimated to new software, find software to replace existing software, and get used to an entirely new interface, even if the interface is judged to be better and more intuitive by said linux junkie, and then still having to dual-boot windows on the machine to run games.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
"Posts like this lead to another, very important point. "
Fixing the problems of an operating system sold by a bitter opponent of Open and Free software is not a wise choice for a proponent of Open or Free software.
Capturing market share for applications like Firefox helps grab mindshare, and developing alternate operating systems gives that mindshare somewhere to go post-Windows.
Doing for Redmond what Redmond does not do for itself while not getting paid is arguably stupid.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the guy who posted the original question about anitivirus should have restated the question a bit, as in:
"I am a music producer who uses Sonar/Ableton Live/Cubase/ProTools/Gigasampler/take your pick of pro audio software. There is absolutely no pro audio software available for Linux that is anywhere near ready for professional work, nor are there stable drivers for professional audio hardware that are ready for prime time (without workarounds like Jack). Since I've used Gigasampler for a decade, a Mac is not an option for me.
NOW does anyone know of a free antivirus software that is dependable and relatively trouble-free? etc etc."
Now I like Linux quite a bit and I use it extensively in my work for off-loading effects and rendering cycles (Reaper does this very nicely) and for storage and many other important duties. But sometimes, there simply isn't a viable option to non-Linux operating system. Maybe it won't always be so. I try every new version of Ubuntu Studio and brave the frustration of using Jack.
The guy made a simple and sincere request, and the constant refrains of "you'd be better off if you used Linux" are not only unhelpful, but rude and wrong.
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
""I am a music producer who uses Sonar/Ableton Live/Cubase/ProTools/Gigasampler/take your pick of pro audio software."
For which he surely paid well, which begs the question of why he is asking for a FREE recommendation instead of one for professional AV software. After all, he has his livelihood riding on the performance of his systems.
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Re:Easy (Score:5, Interesting)
This is my personal opinion, but the computer that runs the pro audio software should not be used for general computing use, and should never be connected directly to the Internet. If you can, have two OS partitions, one for normal computing use, and one dedicated to the music applications.
There are several reasons for this:
First, latency. AV software sucks CPU cycles, which adds latency. This is one of the musician's worst enemies. You want just the OS and the music software if possible. One single swap to disk may screw up a long mix you are working on. This is also why you want to load a music workstation with as much RAM as you possibly can.
Second, music programs are prone to crashing, especially with use of a lot of plugins. You want as few things that can go wrong as possible. Some programs not just work with tons of plugins, but bring with it a metric ton of DRM code, from CD-ROM copy protection, to USB dongles and the drivers those require. All this can conflict with A/V software.
Last, music programs do a lot of I/O. An AV program that hooks onto the system and scans every bit flying by a pipe in real time is going to put a crimp on matters.
For the music partition, if possible it should never touch the Internet directly... connect through another machine with internet file sharing, or best of all, a hardware firewall.
Another reason to have two partitions. You can boot the normal computing one, and A/V scan the one dedicated to the music apps which has a higher chance of detecting rootkits if any are installed.
I personally even recommend using a different operating system than normal for the OS partition with the music apps. If you have the volume license, WinFLP is recommended, as well as XP 64. If you need Vista compatibility, consider Windows Server 2008 which installs almost nothing by default.
This is why I wish more music companies would write commercial stuff for Linux. Linux is extremely low latency. Plus, its not like it doesn't exist. The Korg Oasys, their flagship $8500 keyboard uses Linux as its base OS.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Interestingly enough, it's related a problem we're going to have to start dealing with. Let me explain. I tend to promote OSS to students, largely because they are too poor to afford anything better. Many have MSWorks and NOT MSOffice on their computers or other limitations. So I recommend products like OpenOffice.org or VLC player (among others dependent on the need). Some of these folks, instead of following my links to the real websites, Google OpenOffice and are finding third party knock-offs, that they claim are installing viruses/spyware on their machines.
So the free-software community's problem is that while we generally tell people to take our source code and do *whatever* with it, some malware writers (on Windows, at least), have noted that this provides an opportunity to them. Is a good anti-virus a fix? Probably not. Rather, there needs to be a way for non-discriminating users to tell that they don't have the original distribution. I can't think of how to do this off the top of my head, but suspect it may mean that code is cryptographically certified before it can be considered to be secure. And of course, this opens up a huge can of worms.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Err, no. MD5/SHA checks provide no security. They only let you verify that a file wasn't corrupted in transit. Such things are generally freak accidents and very uncommon, and are mainly useful for checking things like that yep, that CD image was indeed 300MB in size and nothing got cut off anywhere.
If you find a shady site, and download a .rpm or .deb from there, nothing stops them from providing the matching checksum.
Proper security is attained by GPG signatures.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Informative)
Have you actually tried googling for "Open Office"? The first sponsored link points to exactly what he was talking about - a third-party knock-off which requests personal info in order to let you download. I haven't tried signing up, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if they had all sorts of crapware bundled with it.
The problem isn't that his students are not careful, the problem is that:
1. Most people will click the first link on the page
and
2. Many people assume that sponsored links are guaranteed to be legitimate ("if its not legit, why would google let them advertise?").
Now, you could argue that such assumptions are dumb or ignorant - and I'd even agree with you - but blaming students from low-income families for not knowing the fine-points of internet use doesn't really solve the problem.
Re:Easy (Score:4, Informative)
AV software takes a lot cash. You have to pay major cash to get FIPS, Common Criteria, ICSA, and other certifications. These take cash for independent validation.
AV software also takes a lot of research, from honeypots to catch stuff that is happening, to getting people to submit possible zero day variants.
AV software takes a lot of bandwidth. Virus definitions are updated daily (if not more often) by the larger AV vendors, so one needs to have the not just the bandwidth for thousands of definition requests at a time, but a high bandwidth cap because the requests will be hitting 24/7. Not many F/OSS projects have this bandwidth.
Finally, AV software needs to be secured. You have to get a code signing certificate, then make sure your signing key is in a secure hardware container so it can't be hacked. You not just have to sign your code signing certificates with a HSM, but you have to sign your virus definitions so if your virus definition download site gets compromised, the definitions can't be tampered with.
All the above makes AV by noncommercial entity a highly daunting task, especially the bandwidth and the independent vendor certifications.
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Why does a retarded answer like this get moderated 4, insightful rather than -1, off-topic?
I doubt she gives a shit about Ubuntu or wants to use it.
ScrewMaster was correct [slashdot.org], a fast lame first post which don't offer any insight or a solution.
What's the purpose of having useless posts like this in the thread? It won't help her.
My suggestion is avira [free-av.com]. It's good at its purpose and uses few resources.
I like comodo firewall to and they have an anti-virus called "anti-virus 2" I believe but it's beta and I don't know how good it actually is.
Comodo got plenty of free totally usable products.
Re:Trite answer, but on-topic (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Heh, one of the best security add-ons I found for an Exchange Server was a Linux box with clamav and spamassassin acting as a mail relay. The Exchange box had the full suite of commercial AV, but we had trouble seeing if it worked or not. :)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is not completely virus-proof. Where do you figure the term rootkit came from? Linux viruses are far more rare and often quite limited in what they can do, but they do exist.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, if you're going to use Windows then Avira's AntiVir is pretty good for a freebie. You don't need email scanning as anything going to be opened is already scanned and the same applies to their web scanning engine which is just as silly as files are already scanned when opened. Avira does make a free Linux version as well.
The only drawback is on Windows systems it tends to flash an ad up once a day or less to try to get people to buy the product. At the price, effectiveness, and seemingly good responses from AV-COMPARATIVES makes it worth looking into even to buy in my opinion.
Anyhow, the answer to this question isn't switch OSes IMHO. Let 'em use what they want and give them actual answers to the question.
It is sort of like... Well...
"I have a flat tire and need help fixing it, could you?" Asks the article.
"Get a Honda." Replies the FP.
Though, well, 'twas funny.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, I agree. I got sick and tired of McAfee and Norton slowing down my computer, as well as taking hours of work to uninstall when something went wrong. So I tried out Avira and I've never looked back. I've installed it on something like 20 PC's since then, mostly for people who were complaining that their computer runs too slow, or relatives who didn't even know they needed to buy a new license every year (one of them had virus definitions that were 2 years out of date).
Another great thing about Avira
Adware (Score:3, Interesting)
The free version is simply adware. You may think it's not too annoying, but getting a pop-up every single day is too much. Maybe if you weren't doing any work you could deal with the surprise interruptions.
If you want to tout their paid version, then go ahead, but their free version is no longer the best. Try AVG.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I agree. I recently switched to Avast from AVG, because AVG kept asking me to restart the computer (which, ideally, I do about once a month). But Avast wants to announce updates with that gay-ass voice, and constantly scan shit on the hard drive, I don't even know what it's scanning but it's doing it all the time and slowing shit down. I've been thinking about switching back to AVG, I'm just not sure which is more annoying. Granted neither one is anywhere near as annoying as Norton/McAffee.
Re:Easy (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, once I figured out the voices were OUTSIDE my head, I turned them off. There's also an option to not bother with popups while running anything DirectX. Avast is not annoying now.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. Ubuntu's restricted drivers section has a B43 module that works with most Broadcom configs I tested with. Granted, it's not open-source kosher, but most people aren't bothered by that if it makes the difference between wireless working or not working.
Re: (Score:2)
comodo as an anti virus is really not for the inexperienced. i've set it up for a couple people as an antivirus, but i've told them to pay for the support service, and if there was anything i questioned about the system i've had a paid comodo rep check the system out. the main reason i've told people to pay for it is because i don't like setting up remote administration, and then i can tell them 'if anything goes wrong just go to this website and have them open a support ticket.'
yeah it saves me a lot of