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On Mon, 31 Oct 2011 09:27:19 +0000 Martijn Grooten wrote: > In Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Gordon Henderson wrote: > > Clam-AV is a popular one for Linux - however it doesn't do on-demand > > scanning - ie. it only scans from the command-line to scan a file or > > directory and won't scan programs as they get executed. > > > > This is fine for most purposes though - especially if the PC is > > used as a server for Windows clients who may store virus laden > > files - not that they will have any effect on Linux, but at least > > you can warn them. > > There are a number of anti-virus vendors who have a Linux solution. > Most of them are commercial but perhaps one or two are free. > > > It might be a good idea to make sure the company you employ to > > handle your email is capable of virus scanning incoming emails for > > you. Even though email bourne viruses are on the decline, it might > > still help - especially if you sometimes use a Win email client to > > read your email. > > +1 > > There's actually been a huge increase in spam with malware attached to > it in recent months. > > > I've no idea about that, but the plural of virus is generally > > acknowledged to be viruses, but see: > > > > http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/latinlearning/f/virusplural.htm > > > > times change. > > In the case of computer viruses it used to be the case that the 'good > guys' refered to them as viruses and the 'bad guys' (those who wrote > them) as 'viri'. However, 'virus' refers to a specific kind of > malware, one that isn't seen very often anymore; 'malware' is the most > commonly used term these days. > > Martijn. Yasee, I thought that "viruses" was the Anglicised and virii/viri was the "I know Latin, honest" version. It could be argued that the plural of virus is... virus, as virus is already a mass-noun. An individual viral particle should really be called a virion, and virus is the singular noun denoting a non-singular entity... a mass-noun. So it shouldn't really be pluralised as it is already a plural. Anyway, as has already been mentioned, one of the big players in the Linux anti-virus field is ClamAV. I personally prefer it to others because of their principle behind how to identify a virus. It seems that many anti-virus developers took the route of waiting until a significant number of cases were reported before declaring that XYZ is a virus and adding it to their virus database. As I understand it, ClamAV take the opposite approach and will add things to their database at the drop of a hat, but if it subsequently turns out to be a false positive, it gets removed from the database at the drop of a hat too. Grant. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq