What made you think it ever was? That's ridiculous.

Having said that, the threat level of viruses for GNU/Linux is indeed so low that it can actually be risky to waste time, money, and energy on antivirus products when there's so many other higher-priority dangers to be concerned about.

That depends on your requirements. You can't tell if you need a firewall without understanding what your requirements are. Even if two systems are exactly the same, their security requirements may differ wildly, making (for example) a firewall necessary for one but not the other. Generally speaking, though, firewalls are usually a good idea on any operating system.

Personally, I consider a firewall and an anti-virus just part of practicing Safe HEX regardless of the OS I'm using, though I know a lot of Linux users disagree with me.

Linux has a much better security model out of the box than Windows (of course, that's sort of like saying "a closed door is more secure than an open one"), and it is true that there are no Linux viruses *currently* in the wild, but there is no such thing as "immune to viruses." What one person can build another can crack.

Linux's primary AV security is that it has such a small market share it's not a target. But companies running big commercial websites on Linux servers are frequently a target of attacks, because they have things (like credit card numbers) that crackers want.

For Ubuntu, especially for someone new, I would recommend the Firestarter firewall--it's basically a frontend for iptables and very easy to configure. It's in the repos.

There's a lot of sites about iptables about, but this rc.firewall site is probably as good as any for an intro. (An rc.firewall script is a program for configuring iptables--it's one of those things that's easy to understand once you drill down into it, but looks like a bunch of gibberish the first time you see it.)

I currently run AVG for Linux as an anti-virus. It's free, it's command line and has no GUI; it's as un-obnoxious as any AV I have ever used, runs in the background, updates itself automatically, and generally does its job and leaves me alone. (I used to run F-Prot for Linux, but they made some changes to the install that I found cumbersome, even though overall I had been a big F-Prot fan for over 15 years of Windows and Linux.)

1 members found this post helpful.

A antivirus is never a bad idea even in linux.

It's not because linux itself cannot be harmed by 99.99999% of the viruses that you shouldn't 'protect' against them.
You could have a virus for a windows platform sitting on your linux box and waiting to end up on a windows machine to do his thing.

Best practice would be to detect and remove those infected files before they end up in a place where they can actually harm a system.

Meh, AV is overrated, by they time they find the virus, it's too late. Also, if you setup the system properly, permissions wise, and don't do stupid things, you won't have any problems with viruses.

I've merged your thread into the GNU/Linux Antivirus Megathread. The antivirus issue typically results in threads that read like broken records (as has happened here) so this megathread is the best suited place for it IMHO. That said, please start a new thread if you wish to continue the discussion about the firewall issue, which is a completely separate matter.