I am new to linux, having previously been fed on windows. As such all of my experience revolves around windows. Have repeatedly tried to download and install anti-virus without success. Did not even know there was such a thing as the command line, so don't have a clue how to use it. Will be looking it up online and visiting my local library to get some pointers as i am now genuinely intrigued. Its not just point click, point click. You need a bit of grey matter between your ears. In he meantime could someone please explain to me how to install files without me ripping my hair out.

that is pretty vague. What distro are you using as installs are done differently with different distros? Also a virus scan is not really necessary with *nix.

Do you have a package manager and an internet connection? if so, you are probably making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself by trying to things the 'Windows way'.

Go into the package manager (synaptic, install software, add/remove software, or whatever it is called in the distro that you are using). Find something that you want. Click the select box. Let it do it for you.

The one complication could come if you want something that is not in the default repositories for your distro, and for that case you would have to add a repo or two. In that case, you would need info for your particular distro, and for that, you need to say which distro it is that you are using.

(Oh, alright, there is another potential complication if you don't have a 'net connection, but this can eventually be solved also.)

thanks already for your quick replies to my post. In answer to your questions the distro iam using is suse and yes i do have a package manager. And yes i am connected to the net. You say i don't really need to use virus software as linux is open source and not closed source like windows, but i checked the net today and saw a post about installing virus software on linux systems as there is a 10% chance of being infected, the post specifically endorsed avg and as i am so new to linux having come from a windows background and also having used virus protection on that os i just assumed that virus software on linux was a given. Any more tips would be appreaciated.

At the moment, you do not need "anti-virus" for linux.

As you may have discovered, it is sometimes awkward to install software for linux (you will get better at it though: Use your distro's "Package manager").

This has the advantage that is is very painful for people to write viruses for linux: "Viruses" just do not work with linux because the multitude of linux distros all manage things completely differently. So they don't know where to install or how to set anything up. The "virus" probably doesn't have the permissions needed anyway

That's why we on LQ are always asking "What's your Distro?". All the configuration files are in different places, for different distros, unlike win

So, stop worrying. Use linux for the internet, and win for ... .. . whatever ( personally, I no longer see the need to use win for anything ).

If you are using linux as your mailserver, and forwarding email to your win computers (which I doubt is the case) then I think a linux-based virus-scanner-for-windows-applications might be a good idea. You can do some research on this.

Otherwise, I think you can just forget about "viruses" with linux.

The ideal solution:

Win PC for "games" (I do not play them) Etc.

Use the linux PC for anything that connects to the internet.

Never let the win PC connect to the internet, and you'll be OK.

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thanks for the help that you've given me, i now feel much more in the know regarding distro's etc. I just need to conquer the command line now which looks intimidating to say the least. At least i have package manager as a kind of buddy to help me with the basics of adding and removing.

Pkgmgmt101 - openSUSE-Community - http://opensuse-community.org/Pkgmgmt101

Repositories - openSUSE-Community - http://opensuse-community.org/Package_Sources

Add package repositories - openSUSE - http://en.opensuse.org/Add_Package_Repositories

Package Search - http://packages.opensuse-community.org/

Software.openSUSE.org - http://software.opensuse.org/112/en

LinuxCommand.org: Learn the Linux command line. Write shell scripts. - http://linuxcommand.org/

The above links should get you going .

Suse like most of the big distros has very nice documentation.

CMD Line guides:
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

Assuming you're using the Firefox browser, I highly recommend the NoScript and Flashblock extensions.
The former for security (see the home page) and the latter for better control over flash objects.

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