• On Linux, you don’t download random stuff from the internet, e.g. a new browser. You get it from a central source, usually package manager, where it is verified and secure.
• Most stuff is open source, therefore we can check if it does weird stuff. Proprietary software is often seen critically in our community.
• Linux is usually always updated because of the central update mechanism, so that vulnerabilities are fixed very quickly.
• Linux has more granular permissions. There’s no “allow nothing” (but still too much) or “give random software access to the whole device” like on Windows. Linux software is written to need only as many permissions as needed, but not much more.
• Containers are big and crucial, especially when immutable distros grow more popular (even better security!). Many of use use Flatpak because of those pros. With them, we can give or remove every permission, like network access, file system, etc.
• Antivirus is almost useless, it won’t always work reliably, see it more as an additional measure. Many AVs are close to being malware themselfes. They may act as indicator, but not as safeguard for viruses.
• If you share stuff with people using Windows, ClamAV is still handy.
• We aren’t safe from viruses too, but we try to minimize our attack vector as much as we can with those methods mentioned above.
• Windows viruses can still be executed with WINE, so use Bottles (container for WINE) when running Windows software.

AV software is usually the antithesis of security.

Up-to-date software and especially not giving every random binary you find on the web execution permissions seemed to be much more effective.

Scanning for malware is not really that effective and it probably shouldn’t be relied apon. For Linux systems themselves I would look into SElinux as it can tightly control privileges.

Also many features of legitimate software could be considered malware. That includes things like Google analytics and DRM.

Disk encryption is purely for preventing local access to your data. Nothing else.

Then you only download software from official repos and flathub (see my list on how to only allow verified or FOSS apps)

You mount the entire rest of the system non-executable and you have no malware!

Also you should not have a sudo user, use a seperate admin with wheel/sudo group.

Those things dont work well yet, so be careful.

On Linux, you install things from a repository, which is harder to install or execute a malicious binary. Reducing the risk of running binaries from unknown sources from internet, the risks are minimum if you keep your system always up to date, and on Linux is easier than on Windows, a single command to update each and any component on your system.

I don’t really bother with AV on my linux system. What I do is just use trusted software from my repos and run containerized applications.

What I am currently working on is using secure boot with a Unified Kernel Image (already doing that) that boot into a read-only /usr/ partition with verity + signature (one UKI only loads a certain partition with a specific signature, or nothing at all). Any other things I need I create a systemd sysext that gets overlayed ontop of /usr/ (also read-only) or they get installed as flatpak. For development I would just be using nspawn containers and podman/OCI containers for services that are outside of the other scopes.

This is all based on https://0pointer.net/blog/fitting-everything-together.html which is a nice write down of what I am doing/following.

That already covers a lot of different attack vectors by just not having my system be modifyable outside of my control or apps just being containerized.

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