Clamtk and Bleachbit

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When I used Windows my antivirus would update automatically and scans were scheduled. I also ran the antivirus when downloading or if something locked up and felt odd. I also scanned with Malwarebytes fairly regularly and cleaned things up with CCleaner often. Prior to major updates I would run all three before setting a restore point.

In the six years I have had this computer I never had a virus.

Now I know Linux isn’t as prone to viruses and doesn’t seem to get clogged up as bad as Windows but old habits die hard. I have been using Clamtk and Bleachbit and wonder what your opinion of them is.

I tried Clamtk because I had to download game files from a non-repository site and wanted to make sure they were virus free.

Bleachbit is just for cleaning up the various caches and a bit of security when deleting personal stuff. I haven’t seen any warnings about frequency of use or stuff like that. I’m not going to use the root option – at least until I need to and am more familiar with Linux and Mint.

So what is your opinion on these programs?

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I haven’t used bleachbit.

Here’s my experience with ClamTK:

I used it on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and now on 18.04 LTS. As a general AV, it’s a completely worthless piece of junk. Sorry, but that’s my honest opinion on Ubuntu. It’s better on Mint – see below. An installation would work semi satisfactorily for a few weeks and then become completely unresponsive. An uninstall and then reinstall “fixed” things for another few weeks and then the cycle needed repeating. Scanning was incredibly slow, and sometime definition updates worked and sometimes they didn’t. There is no real-time protection. It might be OK if you’re only going to scan the occasional file(s), but otherwise don’t bother with it on Ubuntu.

I currently have it on 3 different installations of Mint 19.2. Still no real-time protection. The definition updater does work consistently, but some of the other preference settings take a few tries before they “take”. Scanning is still slow, but tolerable if you don’t do it very often. A complete scan on a fresh installation of 19.2 took almost 24 hours. Admittedly it was on 10 year old hardware, but everything about 19.2 ran pretty quickly on that computer, so I think ClamTK is just s…l…o…w

Like you I’m coming from a Windows environment and I find it almost unthinkable to not have an antivirus with real-time protection. I also get uneasy when I read comments like “Oh, AV software has no use in Linux.” That just sounds overly confident and smug, and an attitude that likely will come back to bite someone.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve found any free AV that’s any better. If anyone else has any suggestions I’d like to hear them. Or, if someone can convince me that Linux really doesn’t need AV software and can explain why, I’d like to hear that, too.

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HiFlyer, OscarCP

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DrBonzo wrote:

Still no real-time protection.

Well yeah, Clam’s real-time protection is sometimes a bit of a bother to turn on. See https://www.clamav.net/documents/on-access-scanning … you need to use the daemon version (clamd) for it.

DrBonzo wrote:

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve found any free AV that’s any better.

Sophos allows home/unmanaged use of their version 9 for free. That’s a full-coverage product already. https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-linux.aspx … not particularly easy to install or configure, though.

Tuning its realtime / on-access scan for performance in desktop-type use can be another thing… it’t more of a server-oriented product.

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firemind, geekdom, DrBonzo

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Curious, about two months ago Ubuntu 18.04 received an update containing a new version of ClamAV and the previous grinding slowness is gone! What version of ClamAV is in Mint?

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On my Mint 19.2 I’m running ClamTK 5.25. I’m not sure how that relates to a ClamAV version.

Also, for full disclosure: If the Ubuntu 18.04 update came through the software updater, then I have it on my 18.04 LTS computer. But, I haven’t scanned that computer in a while because I never use it except to update it. So, I can’t say if the slowness is gone on that computer or not.

My current Mint 19.2 computer is my daily driver and is a 5th gen core i3. I haven’t scanned it with Clam TK because I don’t want to tie it up for many hours. The computer I mentioned scanning above is a 10 year old Centrino. I’m sure the age and Centrino contributed to the slowness and I’d expect my i3 to be faster, although I have a feeling I’m still looking at a 5 hour scan time (at least).

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Bleachbit is good like CCleaner and other utilities, it will optionally securely delete browser’s caches many other bits tale-tale data from programs it knows about. Users can tick a checkbox for whichever data needs to be cleaned out from the disk. In root mode it will clean out downloaded program packages and just a little bit more, just make sure to use the preview button first.

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firemind

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Thanks for the replies.

Clamtk seems to be updating virus definitions and running smoother. I find it ‘discovers” tons of PUA that when checked at Virustotal turn out to be false positives. It’s main purpose continues to be checking updates for the game I play since they come from outside of the Mint repositories.

 

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