Yast says i have a program called "antivir" installed. However, I can't seem to run it. It's not in the application list (even if I search for it).

Sorry for the horrible noob questions,
-travis

Open a console and type in , you could also try or to learn what you need to do with regards to switches.

yes, thanks. i came back because I JUST figured out that the only way to start it was from the console. I'd thought that it would be on the program list wether it was graphical or not.
there is no manual entry, it says.
Everything else works great.
Thanks again,
-travis

I would consider running ClamAV, although both are good. (Both being AntiVir and ClamAV)

I will consider that should I experience any virus problems. I'm just beginning experimentations with linux, and I hope not to get any viruses in the first place

Yes, but some companies require having virus protection on all machines plugged into a port

ah, but I'm not IN a company..

I know, it is laughable - I get crap from my company because I don't run AV on my laptop. During the last round of major infestation, several thousand of our desktops and several hundred servers got hit. My laptop and our 12 SLES servers ran without a hitch.

Maybe not sooo laughable: Even if your Linux system is not affected, it may act as transmitter of the virus. Especially a fileserver for windows systems. In this case a virusscanner may make some sense.

What company you work for in California?

Yeah, you could get away without AV on linux, but belive you me, once it hits more mainstream people will exploit the vulnerabilities, and as much as you hate to believe it, *nix platforms have more exploits.

AFAIK, there really aren't any easy methods for malicious viruses to spread in *nix, hence the lack of them in the wild. No, *nix is not any less prone to say - a buffer overflow attack - than other OS's, but it does have the built-in security which makes it more difficult for a virus to go about its business without the machine owner knowing of it. One of my biggest beefs with Windows security is not really in the OS, but rather with the attitude that you must be root to run. In fact, many third-party apps will not run unless they have access to SYSTEM32 and hkey_local_machine.

In *nix, in order for an application to access protected areas, the user must explicity grant access. (I know Lindows is trying to defeat this, but they aren't a big part of the market yet.)

As for the concept of my laptop hosting other windows exploits, that could happen, if (a) my firewall settings weren't up to date and (b) I wasn't keenly aware of all inbound/outbound traffic.

Our SLES servers do run McAffee virus scanning software. In fact, the whole county runs McAffee, as far as I am aware. As for where I work, I'm currently with the County of San Bernardino IT department. I'm a secretary - um - project manager with them. Here's one of my apps I wrote about three years ago...

http://www.filesite.org/viewtopic.php?t=173