AVG Anti-virus Free For Linux Now Available For Download

As of Grisoft's official announcement dated Jan 9, '06 it is now available for download/use for free.

On the AVG for Linux download page as of right now you'll find the User Manual (.PDF), and three RPM files for download: for Mandriva (Mandrake), Red Hat, and SUSE at version 7.1.0022.

I haven't had the time to try it yet, but I'm sure some will and perhaps they could report back their experiences with it here. I'll spare my thoughts on potential security issues which could arise from using a closed source anti-virus on Linux, but I'm sure someone will chime in for me. I also won't address the typical snowballing "but why do I need an anti-virus on Linux?", "Linux doesn't need an anti-virus!" type of issues, good or bad as they may be.

Comments?

Notes: Related articles: digg mention & user comments

It requires some type of registration process that isn't apparent during the installation process. Also, the GUI doesn't clean detected virus. Since the registration process is flawed than it probably isn't worth going through the installation headache. Why bother?

Why is it that all the commercial software for linux is stuff we DON'T NEED ! What about... errr.... There is nothing I need that I don't have....Damn. Oh yeah, google earth ! I NEED google earth, NOW !

Hey, they released Google Earth for Macs. I guess we can expect the Linux version soon enough.. Or simply head to http://maps.google.com/ for now

-A

Thanks Ahmed.

And a DVD authoring suite for dummies. With cheesy templates. I'll buy it. Even more if it's GPL.

Sorry can't help you there ;-)

-A

Let me see: One is not even allowed to evaluate it for business/commercial use?

Let me think:

ClamAV: FREE (as in beer/as in speech)
AVG FREE: Free as in beer, EXCEPT, EXCEPT, and if you're in a business, you can't try before you buy

ClamAV: Open source, completely extensible
AVG FREE: Binary only

ClamAV: Often updated with new signatures several times daily, a cronjob can update it every 15 minutes
AVG FREE: Update once a day max, unless you update it manually

ClamAV: I can run it on anything from embedded solutions to beowolf clusters, have it scan mounted shares, integrate with email and proxy servers
AVG FREE: HAHAHAHAHA

Let me think. . . let me think. . . let me think. Gee, this is a tough decision.

Oh I know! I'll stick with ClamAV, thanks very much.

But isn't ClamAV an anti-windows-virus antivirus? AVG's maker is claiming it's an anti-Linux-virus antivirus...

...and how many Linux viruses are still alive? I've been told they're all extinct in the wild, because the security holes they exploited have all been patched out of existance!!

So why do we need AVG's new "product"? What is it doing? How is it supposed to be working?

ClamAV does detect Linux worms, viruses (what few there are), etc.

I had an apache installation I opened up as a test (with a known-vulnerable OpenSSL build) and sure enough, it got hit by slapper within hours and ClamAV positively identified it.

Anti-Linux virus antivirus programs are pretty much snake oil. There are VERY few Linux viruses, and aside from the many "proofs of concept" that the likes of AVG and Symantec love to show off to "prove" *nix is vulnerable, you can count the real viruses that ever made it out to the wild on your fingers - and they tend not to spread due to the inherent security of *nix.

Applicatios on the other hand, can be very vulnerable to worms. Take any of several Apache exploits over the years - those aren't *nix vulnerabilities but application vulnerabilities, which makes the worms cross-platform. The good news is that if you have hardened your systems the worms can't do much of anything because it'll be confined to a user account (like wwwrun or nobody) which has zero access outside of its chrooted area.

This is a free version for personal use. If you want to evaluate it for commercial use, you need the trail version of AVG professional. So yes, you can evaluate it for commercial use, but that's not what this version is.

PS - has anyone here used the free Linux version? I'm familiar with the free version for Windows, and I'd be interested to see how the Linux one compares.

Yes, but the point is that.. why do we want "free non-free software" on linux? We are forced to accept it in many cases for drivers, etc. but it's definitely not ideal. Continuing to use those when this when there are completely free alternatives (free in price and free to modify) doesn't seem to make sense.

If the "free non-free" product is the best tool for the job, then of course it makes sense to use it!

I'll grant that this is true from a purely practical point of view.

However, if one of your values is promoting free software, then using software like this is not beneficial to that goal.

A lot of people use illegally copied software rather than open alternatives as well, because it's easy enough to obtain free. However, it would be better for everyone if they simply used the truly free alternatives as that's one way to support them. The more people that use something the more interest in developing it there will be (and of course it's good to support those projects that you can).

Anyway, I just don't feel like proprietary software is ideal, and so pushing it from an idealistic point of view is a bad thing in the long run. I'm sure a lot of people don't care about this.

so can only rpm based distros use it then?

kinda sucks, but i would say stop bitchin at AVG for giving you something for free. its not a bad thing that they are acknowledging linux is it?

I have tested AVG for Linux. Using four test files it failed misserably by only detecting one of the four files.

ClamAV on the other hand caught all four files, very quickly.