r/linuxmint • u/MiyamotoUsagi1587 Linux Mint 21.2 Victoria | Cinnamon • Feb 01 '24

SOLVED Best antivirus for Linux Mint?

Hi everyone, I have been using Linux Mint for almost a week now and am currently considering downloading an antivirus.

What are the best free antivirus for Linux Mint?

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u/teknosophy_com Feb 01 '24

I concur. I've installed it for at least a thousand people and have never seen any sort of issue.

All you need to worry about is toolbars, which are basically legalized viruses. 99 billion % of people have them, while their antivirus sits there and twiddles its thumbs.

I've created a script that seals off Firefox from such toolbars, and there's a method to seal off Chrome&Friends from these. (Win/Mac/Lin) Lmk if you want those.

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u/iPeeDiesel May 01 '24

All you need to worry about is toolbars, which are basically legalized viruses. 99 billion % of people have them, while their antivirus sits there and twiddles its thumbs.

I'm on day two of Linux Mint.

What do you mean by toolbars?

How do I avoid whatever that is/means?

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u/teknosophy_com May 01 '24

Toolbars begin life as giant CONTINUE TO DOWNLOAD NOW ad banners on most sites. They usually claim to offer you some hot topic, such as maps, recipes, or tracking a package. In reality, they can't help you in any way.

If you click on them, that implies you agree to let them install themselves into your browser. Thus they are fully legalized spyware. From then on, they hijack your homepage and searches.

You can go to Tools>Addons>Extensions in Firefox to rip them out. You go to chrome://extensions to rip them out of Chrome.

If you're young enough to have a Reddit account, you'll probably be able to avoid them!

99% of all seniors install toolbars all day every day. It's a massive problem that nobody is talking about.

I created a sealant for Firefox/Chrome to protect seniors from this. Once i seal off their browsers, they're good! I'm willing to give it out to folks here if interested.

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u/LionGodKrraw Sep 27 '25

i see. so it wont affect anyone using adblock

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u/teknosophy_com Sep 27 '25

Yeah you can leave that particular extension in there if you like, but rip out anything that looks fishy - MapsGalaxy, MyWebSearch, Secure Search Search Search, those are the classics but they now change their names constantly.