Comments on: Avast Antivirus for Ubuntu Desktop

By: Student

Student — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:48:37 +0000

Great How To, easy install considering I am an ex Windows, now Mac + Linux user. I installed Unbuntu today and played around with it and amazed at its speed, and the interface plus your instructions just make me think I made the right decision to switch. Thanks

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:07:58 +0000

I have Avast. I will use it to scan my flashdrive, there are two reasons that I will use it.

Firstly, I have XP installed with no internet access. This makes it kind of safe as long as I don’t infect it myself. I use it for a few excellent reasons. Firstly linux DOES NOT come with everything I need. For adjusting 300 digital pictures from my camera, I use ACDSee Pro 2 (by far the best ACDSee, not a hogger, and with incredibly easy to use advanced lighting adjustments - to do the job in photoshop would take you more than 15 minutes per picture, and I can do maybe 15 seconds per picture on average. Yahoo don’t write a good messenger, and pidgin won’t work properly with webcams or file transfers. It won’t run in Wine, but it will run in virtualbox installed XP.

It isn’t my job to protect MS users, but as a linux user it would be extremely embarrasing to be caught out infecting a work computer. I laugh at people at work (recently zipping files onto my flashdrive, I took a screen shot. Booting Vista, unzip to desktop in 14 minutes. Boot XP and unzip takes only 4 minutes, then boot Ubuntu and do the same in something like 5 to 7 seconds - I missed it, sorry!)

ON DEMAND scanners are what we want aren’t they? no background services, autostart programs or other crap. I have to confess to having Screenlets starting up a nice clock and desktop calendar - but that might not last long. Hopefully the majority will continue to go for KDE, and leave me safer and more secure with my rather weird gnome desktop, and windows with no buttons. My menu is on the side, and I will keep it there. As my abilities continue to improve, I will continually mess up my system so that it works for me and is easy for me to use, and hopefully not anything like everyone else’s system.

All I really want now is a one click method to make a complete backup image of my installation which I can install by opening from the liveCD. This is Vista, and should be next on Ubuntu’s wish list. Stop bashing windows, coz there’s a lot that’s amazing in there. Just the basic system that’s not so cool, and that’s largely the fault of the people that don’t like to move the menu from the bottom left to the top left of the screen…

By: daniel arispe

daniel arispe — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:09:09 +0000

i,m not sure if i got screwed with avast ,ipaid 50.007-4-08 for an antiviros for my laptop , and now i dont know if i have it or not , ihave no icons on my computer to log on to avast,and now , cyberdefender keeps bothering me on my computer it is now saying that my pc is infected i dont know what to do ! how do i know if i have avast or not.

By: Juli

Juli — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:18:03 +0000

When I run the
sudo dpkg -i avast4workstation_1.0.8-2_i386.deb
in my ubuntu 7.10
I got an error:
unexpected end of file.

By: Rye

Rye — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:24:41 +0000

The truth is that you do need antivirus. If you have wine installed, a windows virus can hang out there. I picked one off of one of my computers in wine. Also, even though Ubuntu is almost 100% immune to viruses and most windows viruses can’t affect the operating system in a negative way, we need to remember that it’s possible to send our window’s friends viruses and not even know it because most viruses wouldn’t affect our systems.

Here is some good reading on the subject…
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Linuxvirus

By: Kilz

Kilz — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:58:10 +0000

There is no reason the average Ubuntu desktop user needs anti-virus. All it gives is a false sense of security to new users while eating up resources. We should be doing more to educate new users about the reasons its not needed rather than wasting their time installing anti-virus.

By: jj

jj — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 04:23:23 +0000

Avast received the coveted virusbtn.com logo for their website in 2003, 2004,2005,2006,2007. They are up for review again in April 2008. Few have.

By: Gus

Gus — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 02:13:54 +0000

Christian,

I have the same problem with the “Deleted stale lock file”. But I have scanned in terminal and it works fine. I suggest you use the following syntax:

First step: avast-update (It does not show the downloading progress in terminal. You need to wait)

Second step: use cd / to select the directory you wish to scan.

Third step: avast -a -c -p3 -r {report file name]

This last step should give you a complete scan in the directory you select. Infected files should be repaired (-p3) and the report file you named should be created in the directory you scanned. Anyway, avast will give you a report in terminal when the job is finished.

Try avast -h for additional scan options.

By: MYDeskBlog.com

MYDeskBlog.com — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 23:04:48 +0000

Thanks! It’s great to know one of my favorite antivirus I use in my Windows machine is available for Linux. Although I’m wondering the same, as to whether it scans for Windows viruses. If yes, wouldn’t that be a waste of resources?

Anyway, this is a great site to learn about Ubuntu stuff. I’m a 2-week-old Ubuntu newbie.

By: stanmoong

stanmoong — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 10:13:23 +0000

Thanks! It works great on my Feisy Fawn