You can count the number of Linux viruses on your fingertips. Moreover, most versions of Linux today come patched for these viruses. So why do you need an anti virus for Linux? Linux can’t get infected with most viruses but can transmit them over a heterogeneous network where there are Windows clients. In case of home users who don’t have the fear of transmitting viruses over a network, the problem is that of dual booting. In this case FAT partitions can get infected during file transfers over partitions. 

But, which anti virus should you opt for? To find the answer we tested three popular Linux anti viruses: F-Prot, RAV (Reliable Anti Virus) and Clam AV.

To test the anti viruses we used a CD containing 18735 viruses detected by NAV 2004 among 25789 files grouped in different zipped files. 

F-Prot
F-Prot showed good results when compared with the others. When ran with the ‘– —archive –r’ switch, it scanned 24407 files and found 17868 infected files. One disadvantage with the free version of F-Prot is that it can’t clean the infected files, but can only move or remove them.

RAV 
We used the 30-day shareware version for our test. The front end of the anti virus is easy to use and looks similar to any Windows-based anti virus. The software also features an automatic update agent integrated to the front end. We tested our standard virus folders and it found 15765 infected files. The best part of the software is that it not only scans and deletes the infected files but also cleans them.

Clam AV
The output of Clam AV was quite confusing. When ran with the ‘- -unzip –r —remove’ switch, the software scanned only 471 files and found 198 infected files. This was because it treats a zip file as a single file and if it finds it infected, it removes the entire file. 

To test the accuracy of the software we ran F-Prot over a folder that had already been cleaned by Clam AV (ie, infected zip and normal files removed). In spite of this, F-Prot still found 106 infected files. 

So here is the answer for you. All the anti viruses have their pros and cons and are suitable for different users. If you are a home user and don’t want to use the command prompt RAV is good for you, but then you need to pay for it. But F-prot is free for home users and it also found maximum viruses in our test. And if you are not interested in using proprietary software in your Linux box then you have Calm AV. 

Anindya Roy