Hello! Sorry maybe for this beginners-question: do I need dedicated anti-virus / anti-malware software for my Linux System?

I’m not using my laptop for anything shady: no filesharing, no pirating, etc. Just the usual boring bit of work or streaming or surfing the web. Do I need dedicated safety measures? Like ClamAV for example? I read a bit about it but there where mixed messages, where people said it’s not needed.

I’m running Linux Mint and Cinnamon on a laptop since a few months and couldn’t be happier with an operating system. Everything works fine and until now I had no trouble at all (besides this little annoying bug, where my touchpad gets randomly set to “deactivated”, but this really is a minor issue and maybe just a “stupid user”-Problem).

Before I suffered through decades of windows. But no more!

  • @[email protected]
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    fedilink
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    95 months ago

    A lot of people here are “use Linux!” Well as Linux’s desktop share goes up, so does it being a target for attacks. The more people you have, the less that are going to configure it correctly (that’s just a fact, and not everyone will be their parents tech support) so it’s just a matter of time.