Do I Need an AntiVirus Program on Linux?

When you think of an anti-virus program, especially if you're coming from a Windows world, you think of a program that runs in the background and scans files as they are accessed (or, perhaps you have your entire system scanned on a regular basis) to see if anything is infected with a virus. This is an effective way of detecting and removing viruses on a desktop computer; and for a Windows machine, it's all but a necessity given the vast amount of threats circulating on the Internet.

Linux anti-virus programs don't work this way, because Linux anti-virus programs aren't meant to protect the desktop machine from Linux viruses. An anti-virus program running on Linux is designed to detect Windows viruses, so that they aren't spread, unknowingly, by the Linux user.

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