Friends,

Can any body plz tell me why a linux box doesn't need a ANTIVIRUS Tools ?

Lets just say it was designed from the ground up for security instead of an afterthought by shortsighted greedy dumpster diving thiefs

Really security was designed in. from the start. However like everything made by man mistakes happen and mistakes are fixed. Linux has had a (small) number of problems in the past, nothing is perfect. Linux does not need ANTIVIRUS Tools with the exception of antivirus tools to clean infections from email and to combat Windows malware. No 'helpful' applications and/or processes that have more rights then a system administrator help also.

One of the first things you do in Linux is setup a normal user that does not have administrator rights. This helps keep grabage form infecting the entire sytem (local user files only are still possible but rare). For a more complete answer remember google is your friend.

Because linux viruses are so rare that they effectively dont exist. The main reason why some people have virus scanners on linux is to make sure that they dont forward anything through their email. But for a computer that is just for personal use virus tools are pretty unnecessary

The main reason that viruses do not exist for linux (so i was told by my comp sci housemate) is because of the architecture of the system not being as fundamently flawed as windows (ie having to chose to run as root). Therefore it makes sense for malicious programmers to design something to exploit the more open and more widely used system. That said though, linux/unix is becoming more and more accessible to the end/home-user and because of this viruses for linux probably will become more common place. Maybe it's worth having a virusscanner like avg just to keep ahead??

Also, in Windows you know that almost everyone browses with IE, reads email with Outlook Express, uses MSN as their, well, MSN client...etc. So to make a successful virus you make it exploit one of those knowing that everyone uses them. With Linux, there are loads of browsers, Links, Lynx, Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, Epiphany, Galeon... ditto with email clients. So making a virus that propogates successfully is harder still.

YEAH A VARIETY OF GUESSES and different configurations make them more fortified against viruses , correct me but doesthis mean that if one version of one distro gets infected by a virus does that mean that even the other computer with same version of same distro wont get infected because of a MODIFIED KERNEL? ??...