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Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. |
I’m thinking to install Clamav on my Sony VAIO laptop and was just wondering if the system requirements draw would be too much for a machine with only 2 Gigs of RAM. I have not been able to find the System Requirements for Clamav + daemon +freshclam + clamtk.
Has anyone seen any info. on this as I don’t want to overwork my laptop by running an AV program full time.
Clamav has a portable version.
I believe so. I think you can put it on the PC in a folder as well.
For whatever this is worth – I’m running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on a 10 year old HP laptop. All-in-all it runs very well: fast boots, responsive, etc.
BUT in my experience ClamAV is a worthless product, at least on my machine. I believe you can run it from a flash drive, although I’ve installed it on the hard drive. It’s impossibly slow, the user interface is almost useless, it won’t update definitions, well you get the idea. I’ve only used it with a graphical interface, so maybe it would be better when running from a terminal.
Also, if you go looking for comparative test results, I think you’ll find it really isn’t that effective.
I’ve trashed it and no longer use it. I suggest you look elsewhere – I believe Avast has a decent package, although I haven’t tried it. I’m currently running without AV, although this machine is not my daily driver; it’s an in-case-all-else-fails machine.
Good luck in your AV search, and let us know if you find a good one.
Yeah, Clamav is a bit odd in some ways. Freshclam autoupdate needs to be enabled separately in most cases and…
Also there’s the fact that any scan-on-access tool with decent coverage will have a noticeable performance impact on a system with 2 GB RAM – no way around it, given all the various kinds of malware that it’ll have to be able to detect these days.
Still, last time I checked it was the lightest-weight alternative… hm, really should check how much load Sophos’s Linux version generates if I switch its kernel interface from talpa to fanotify… that’s definitely a server-focused product though.
Not good news ClamAV is still to slow to initialize and update definitions using Ubuntu 18.04.3, and there is disparity between VirusTotal results and the local ClamAV installation.
VirusTotal’s ClamAV configuration and scanning engine are probably different from Ubuntu’s package.
Linux doesn’t need AV.
Windows definitely does. 
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
https://askubuntu.com/questions/114000/how-to-update-clamav-definitions-database
Updating Clam AntiVirus Definitions
http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/clamav-antivirus-scanner-for-linux-review-installation-usage
Very Recent Review of Clam Antivirus
And remember most Antivirus are Closed Source. However Clam is Open Source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam_AntiVirus
IMO if you are running Linux ( An open Source OS ), why not use an open source Anitvirus as well?
You don’t have to run real-time on-demand scanning in order to make use of Clam. I have it installed, but only with on-demand scanning configured.
Real-time scanning always has a performance hit… the only question is how severe it will be. You can always try it and see how it goes, and if it slows things down too much or uses too much RAM, you can stop using the real-time function. The odds of something being there for it to find in Linux is quite slim, so a periodic on-demand scan may give you the peace of mind you are looking for, without any performance hit.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
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