It is necessary for Linux Mint / Ubuntu users desktop user to secure their desktops by installing a zero configuration firewall like Firestarter and install an Anti-Virus like AVG.

For a tutorial on how to install and use Firestarter, go here.

Here’s how to install and use AVG Anti-Virus in Linux Mint / Ubuntu:

1. Go to http://free.avg.com/us-en/download.prd-alf and click on ‘AVG Free Edition for Linux (avg85flx-r874-a3473.i386.deb)’ to download the Debian package file.

2. After the file has been downloaded, open the terminal and change the directory to the folder where you have saved the downloaded file. Now issue the following command at the terminal to install the downloaded Debian package file-

sudo dpkg -i avg85flx-r874-a3473.i386.deb

3. After the installation is complete, issue the following command at the terminal –

sudo avgctl

4. Reboot your system to ensure that AVG related daemons(services) start properly.

5. After the system has rebooted, open the terminal and issue the following command to update the AVG Anti-Virus definition files –

sudo avgupdate

6. After the update is completed, issue the following command at the terminal to perform a full Anti-Virus scan on your system –

sudo avgscan / -a -H -c

The above command scans your root directory(/) i.e. all files in your system are scanned. The option ‘-a’ instructs the AVG Anti-virus scanner to scan the compressed archive files too. The option ‘-H’ instructs the scanner to use heuristics while scanning. The option ‘-c’ instructs the scanner to scan cookies too.

7. After the scanning is completed, the you will see a result similar to this –

(Please note that in above screenshot we have interrupted the scan in order to show you what a result screen will look like). Also, note that the current version of AVG Anti-Virus for Linux does have a ‘-l’ command line option for clean, as per documentation it doesn’t take any action by default. So it’s recommended that you manually delete any virus infected files found by the scanner. Hopefully, they’ll improve the scanner in the future to take action on infected files without manual intervention.

Also, having no GUI sucks, but the advantage is that the scanning completes faster and Linux users who don’t use GUI can easily use AVG Anti-Virus to scan their system.