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If I switch to Linux, will I still need a firewall and antivirus software?
A firewall and antivirus is good practice, but not nearly as necessary as it is in Windows.

Following the grand open source tradition -- the firewall and antivirus tools are free and with most distros *extremely* easy to setup.

I remember in Mandrake (now Mandriva) it was as simple as telling it to install a firewall and it did the rest. It also setup ClamAV (free linux antivirus for all 3 that exist) by default and set it up without asking a thing from me.

What distro do you use?

In Gentoo... I just:
# emerge clamav klamav shorewall
# /etc/init.d/clamav start
# /etc/init.d/shorewall start
[KlamAV is a KDE user-friendly GUI for clamav... shorewall is a nice firewall]
I have the Ubuntu Linux CD coming in the mail. It's hard to beat their price. The CD is free, and it's shipped for free.

I hope the old adage, "You get what you pay for" doesn't apply in this case.

65tiger Wrote:
I have the Ubuntu Linux CD coming in the mail. It's hard to beat their price. The CD is free, and it's shipped for free.

I hope the old adage, "You get what you pay for" doesn't apply in this case.

Ubuntu has done nicely on the desktops I've tried it on. It *really* vomited badly on an AMD Athlon 64 laptop I have... but said laptop has an arseload of proprietary crap in it. :(

Ubuntu also does something useful for newbies... it "hides" Linux root from you (makes it easier to use Linux, that is), but does it in a way where you lose no functionality or security.

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