ClamTk - Scan Your Linux System for Viruses

In a recent review, I wrote about a little extension called Nautilus-clamscan that makes it almost trivial to scan an individual file for viruses. Of course, there are currently almost 100,000 individual files on my computer, not to mention another 20,000 or so MP3 files, quite a few videos, and then just some general "stuff" on my external drive. To invidually click on each one of them would be... dumb.

Thankfully, there's a really easy to use program called ClamTk that makes it simple for a Linux user to scan his/her computer for viruses.

Hang on a second, I hear you saying. I thought Linux users didn't need to check for viruses.

Well, that's to a large extent true. For the most part, Linux and Mac OSX are pretty much in the clear. This is for a variety of reasons, but suffice it to say that if you use either of those, you're statistically far less likely to get a computer virus than a Windows user.

However, what would happen if a friend (who uses Windows and doesn't know he's got a computer virus) emails you an infected document? You run Linux, so you don't worry about viruses, but you do think the document is funny, so you send it on to another Windows user, who also doesn't check for viruses, even though he runs Windows. What happens? The friend you sent the document to gets a computer virus, and it's because what you sent hime!

So there are good reasons to scan your Linux computer for viruses, even if they end up being mostly about protecting others, and not yourself.

Now, how about using ClamTk? Thankfully it's really easy. Start it up, and here's a tip... start it up as Super User (Administrative user, in other words), because in order to get up-to-date virus definitions, you'll need to pass along your authorization, so that will save a bit of time and aggravation.

Once you've got your definitions, the only thing left to do, really, is start scanning. You can do a quick scan of your Home directory, or a full scan (which takes longer, but gets EVERYTHING in your home directory). You can also have ClamTk scan hidden files (such as configuration files).