Linux uncrackable...?

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sat, Sep 08, 2012 at 20:19:42 -0400,
   "Eddie G. O'Connor Jr." <eoconnor25 at gmail.com> wrote:
>So how would someone who's still a greenhorn to Linux protect their 
>machine?...I refuse to install anything that's going to "charge" me 
>for their product....(call it a glitch in my mental processes, but if 
>I'm going to use "Free Open Source Software" then it should be 
>"free"...no?) I cannot get a handle on ClamAV, it's too complicated 
>for me, but I haven't seen anything that's available for Linux....any 
>advice?...

Don't run untrusted code be careful with untrusted data. The main attacks 
will be from web pages and unsolicited email. Turning off javascript and 
disabling most plugins in your web browser will help. Having you mail reader 
just process text/plain parts by default will also help. You can manually 
run a pdf viewer or the like if you feel that an attachment is most likely 
not hostile.

In the short run, most run of the mill malware is going to be targeting 
Windows binaries, so your risks are pretty low.

Anti-virus is a poor solution to the problem. It doesn't scale well. Checking 
for bad code / data, instead of good code / data is not the way to solve 
the problem.