hi yall, finally got up and running with Xandros, but i' paranoid about viruses, adware and firewall, am i just being paranoid or is it a real problem with Xandros, btw, i dont have a clue about linux
Linux is by nature resistant to viruses, trojans, spyware you name it. As long as you generally keep updated (via your distros update tool) then you'll be fine. Don't need to run antivirus (antivirus software like ClamAV is only used to scan windows shares on networks), there is a built in firewall in the kernel. Check out one of ATs stickies in the linux section. In other words, theres no need to be paranoid.
Addis is absolutely right. There are more AV's for Linux than there are virii for it. These include AVG, Trend Micro, Sophos and Avast, both on the client and server. I run ClamAV on my Linux box, but not as a daemon, only as a run-when-desired process. I use it to periodically scan my WINE / Cedega directories to keep my Windows software clean. All that being said, if you are paranoid you can mount your /home volume as no-execute and you will be literally immune to virii and not just resistent to them. Period.
You don't really need to. Setting that as no execute will mean that you won't be able to install some specific linux programs.
Well normally you don't install programs in /home so you should apply a non-execute policy. Donkey, most applications that you install (that are not originally part of the distribution) go under /usr/local/share; /usr/bin; /usr/local/bin; Go into a terminal and type: Code: sudo chmod -R u+rw /home
If you do what Megamaced suggested, unfortunately you will not even be able to enter your home directory, as far as I can tell... Actually, the correct way to do this is to modify your /etc/fstab. Of course, this only works if your /home is mounted on a different volume than /root or /usr. For example, if your /etc/fstab looked like the following: Code: /dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/hdb1 /home ext3 defaults 1 2 /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto rw,noauto,user,sync 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda1 swap swap pri=42 0 0 ...you would change the entry for /home to look like this: Code: /dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 1 1 [b]/dev/hdb1 /home ext3 defaults,noexec 1 2[/b] /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,noauto,user,exec 0 0 /dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto rw,noauto,user,sync 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda1 swap swap pri=42 0 0
