Thanks folks at suse! the 6 or 7 months i’ve used opensuse 11.2 i’ve very much enjoyed your stand out flavor of linux. each year or so, since i was unfamiliar with os’es other than windows, i made the switch to a major distribution to familiarize myself with linux and the way the system works. now i am much more familiar, though i’ve a lot to learn.
11.1 had me confused as to repos and the design and its customizability was greatly improved with 11.2 and its appeal stands out. wanted to let you guys know, the major developers, that you are doing an outstanding job. the only issues i have had are problems minimizing grouped windows(mplayer and bittornado), probably bugs.printer works great. i havent tried out the new windows gaming option, but im sure it works great. wish you a successful future of development, profit, and prosperity.
just two questions: how does its antivirus function operate?(what service keeps foul stuff from entering my box i know it isn’t my cheesy linksys) and are there any online vids or flash vids of training for suse linux?(any online classes i can pay for?)
Welcome to the openSUSE forums - you may wish to break your questions out
into multiple parts (by topic) and ask in the appropriate forums. This
particular forum is for comments/suggestions about the forums themselves
(and are, as such, not the right place to ask for help).
Most of your specific issues are best suited for the applications forum.
For your question on training videos, you might ask in the “Looking For”
forum.
In this thread, Beginner’s guide to Linux - openSUSE Forums there are links to some very nice instruction videos. They are made for 11.1, but a lot of the basics are still the same.
To add to the above comments I see you have some misunderstandings.
We are not developers. We are openSUSE users like you. These Forums (welcome again) are a place for all openSUSE users to help each other.
There is no antivirus function as such. The Unix/Linux operating system is much more secure in principle. Among them are:
. you should never log in as root, but only as a normal user, that means that even when disaster happens, it can ‘only’ destroy the personal data of yourself, never the system (or other users data);
. normaly one installs software from rather secure repositories, not from any unknown and untrusted source on the internet;
. dangerous attachements on incoming mails are never executed automaticaly (when made for Windows, they are not even executable);
. much more.
Linux people have only antivirus programs on their systems when they are in the chain of transfering mail from windows systems to windows system. That is to protect those windows systems, not themselves!
I’d like to add some comment to @hcvv’s post. By default there is no antivirus function in openSUSE/linux. There are loads of threads in these forums that explain why not.
If you insist on having an antivirus component running, there are some options in the repos:
clamav
antivir / avira
Do not install Kaspersky for Linux. I’ve never seen it working properly, have seen unaccessible systems after an install.
Fruther to hcvv and Knurpht’s posts, as of yet there is no virus threat for Linux. There have been less than a handful of virus, but for the reasons noted they have not propagated and there is no need to defend against them, other than what was already noted: (1) never login as root (2) only install software from secure repositories (3) don’t blindly run applications that come in emails (which in fact is the same as item-2 (4) maintain your firewall.
Note that most anti-virus programs for Linux are designed to run on Linux PCs that are servers, and are designed to scan and protect MS-Windows PCs and NOT protect Linux PCs. And while there are a very small number of programs that purport to protect Linux PCs against virus, I do not believe any of them actually work. I think none of them work. The fact is, since there are NO Linux virus to speak of, it is NOT possible to test these programs against any Linux virus, and I would bet that none of these programs to detect Linux virus even work.
There MAY come a day when Linux is susceptible to virus, but its not THIS day.
Now there are REAL threats to Linux. Primarily from
someone hacking into a Linux PC via an open port (typically port#22 is the most vulnerable)
falling victim to a phishing attack (which affects all operating systems)
falling victim to an email scam to give up one’s bank/financial/email password/username.
It is against those items that Linux users need to defend against most