Newbie still confused about potential for virus problems on Ubuntu

[wirechief]

My experience has been that virus scanners are a nuisance at best however
they do provide some degree of comfort if you run them and nothing is found
but then when you find that one scanner finds a virus and the other doesnt
you start having questions.
My most recent experience with a virus (or bug) or malformed linux command
that disabled my ability to access my gmail send waves of concerns and I nuked
rather than trying to diagnose what actually was happening, I just
dont lay complete
trust to the thinking that these things are just nuisances and you can
just avoid them
by doing x y and z, you really dont know what is going on with it,
especially when experts
cannot diagnose many of them and spend millions trying to invent tools
to just detect their presence.
I have the feeling that surfing the net on something like a livecd
will help in keeping the worst of these
from attaching themselfs to your HD (provided it is not able to mount
it and drop its eggs) also a usb key
that does not have persistence is a good tool for safe surfing, not
sure a VM machine is completely safe
but it too offers some protection.
You would be correct in your thinking that Ubuntu is less likely to
harbor a virus than a windows system simply
because of the way linux is made and virus makers do not get as much
publicity by wrecking a linux system
as they do wrecking windows....
If i have a new install of Ubuntu or any other distro and weird things
are happening i do not think virus, I think
maybe i had a bad install but as long as i have checked my download
with md5sum and similar checks with the media that i burned then i
start lookiing for simple programming bugs especially if the symptom
is repeatable.

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 1:02 PM, Ed Oneill <kodiack91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have clam av  but was told it is only for e_mail? and I am running avg
> free but want to try avast also!
> What is the chances of virus problem on ubuntu 8.10 if used to surf web,open
> e-mail and
> fileshare with transmission ? Am I correct thinking the Ubuntu os is not in
> danger only a windows based system I would interact with  is at risk and
> that is the reason to use virus scanners? Does clam av,avast,bitt defender
> and avg scan the whole system or do they only scan the windows based files
> It seems clam does not scan my shared files from windows and Avg shows
> errors and says it can not open Ubuntu os files it only scans shared
> files/folders!
>
> Has anyone useing Ubuntu had virus issues and how would you know what are
> some of the possible problems if they exist ?
>
>                                                                        Thank
> You !
>
>
> Ed
>
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