The more popular Linux becomes, the less true this will be.

Hi there 👋

Don't have installed much from the AUR though.

I don't trust that everything that outputs from pacman -Qdtq should be deleted. Like I want to keep vlc.

Containerize or Virtualize whatever you plan to run, keep it volatile, otherwise you’ll have a host operating system riddled with unnecessary data.

The unsandboxed package model was only ever safe in its original conception - with organizationally trusted and cryptographically enforced maintainer model. Remove the maintainer/developer trust requirement and you need a sandbox in order to prevent malware having root access on your system. Tis why mobile apps were sandboxed on Android and iOS from the get go.

My eyes, I look at AUR packages before building them, as any real arch user does. AFAIK, antivirus programs would do the same to compiled binaries, looking for suspicious things and blocking if it finds something.

And you believe that makes you safe?

Shit like this is a blemish on the Linux community.

I was on arch as a vestige from my school days, having never quite found the time to switch to something more stable. When I saw the news over the weekend, I checked and found 1 would-be-infected package on my machine that was thankfully months out of date. I'm well past the point of wanting to examine PKGBUILDs every time (hence the out of date package). But, instead of just removing AUR packages and sticking to arch repos, I decided to sweep up the technical debt by wiping and installing Fedora. I'm liking it so far, minus the absolute pain in the ass that is Nvidia on Linux. Fuck academics and their insistence on writing everything targeting CUDA; otherwise, I'd have saved a good bit of money a few years ago with a much more compatible AMD card.

I think if you do pacman -S vlc it won't be orphan anymore though. I removed everything, if I miss something I'll install it again.

Custom OS that no one else has access to. It might be full of exploits and bugs, but only you would know that. 😉

Use the AUR, have an antivirus, no infected packages. However I was thinking of switching to https://chimera-linux.org/ before the infected packages went out.

A simple install kept it orphaned. Instead I needed to run sudo pacman -D --asexplicit vlc

Isnt it just a single line command to get nvidia working?

Arch users just randomly dropping "I use Arch btw" everywhere, it was only a matter of time.

Avoid success at all costs - Simon Peyton Jones

I'm trying Clamav but its giving me (at least what i think is) a bunch of false positives. I'll look into SElinux.

Have you looked into drop-in (ZLUDA) or recompile (SCALE, chipStar) things? Though they may not have been helpful with the years gone by (and may each have their own pros/cons).

I'm still using a 1050Ti (and legacy driver shifting to AUR did block me from updating), value doesn't seem great and not going to buy something used from eBay. So that still complicates things for me.

Distro-wise I probably want something slower than Arch but not sure about point releases. And I am hoping for something that does updates in a way more friendly to slower internet (giving less update friction), but I suspect it doesn't exist. Some things (OpenSUSE, NixOS) seem like they might be closer to I want but I have hangups about them (Patterns on SUSE and lack of videos for Slowroll, NixOS having multiple solutions for dynamically linked executables especially if I decide to stop using Steam directly).

I am at "no fucking yays and the bunch, check the package create/update dates, read PKGBUILD, only update when necessary". Has served me well so far

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=aoag03mSuXQ

So what are good antivirus options for Linux? is it still pretty much just ClamAV?

one thread I found from 2 years ago where someone asked for the same thing, a lot of the replies are just "you don't need antivirus on Linux" lmao

Yeah, use and promote aurto instead. They require you to trust the maintainer and would remove the package from the local repo if the maintainer is changed

Our company uses eset https://www.eset.com/us/home/antivirus/

But afaik it costs money to really work.

But your brain should be the best antivirus you have.

ClamAV users, how's it going?

I learnt a lesson yeah. It looks like I got away, there's no rootkit, I found nothing weird running, I don't have npm Installed, and up until now it doesn't seem like the packages I had installed were compromised. But I had way more AUR packages installed than I was aware of. And I was just updating them without really caring about the pkgbuild, I have better things to do. Multiple packages were outdated crap that shouldn't have been there anymore.

I was careless and took too much risk. I reduced the Installed AUR packages to a minimum, and from now on I will verify the PKGBUILDs on every update. Maybe Arch isn't really what I need. I'm on the LTS kernel and I no longer really use the AUR. But switching will be a huge hassle and this setup will work well from here on out, so I'll stick to it for now

But your brain should be the best antivirus you have.

Is there an AUR package for it? seems not in the official repo

I never had any issues on TempleOS.

Zero remote exploits since it was released. That's what divinely-inspired coding looks like, everyone.

Never use things like yay, just read the PKGBUILD and run makepkg. AUR wasn't meant to be automated. But it's better to use Flatpak, because it provides sandboxing (not for every app, but it can be reviewed before installation).

Using aur helpers is fine if they make it easy to read the pkgbuild, which paru does. It's too annoying to check for PKGBUILD and upstream/vcs updates for each package individually.

Ideally the aur helper would point out when 1) a package changed maintainers since your last install, 2) a package's PKGBUILD itself changed (not just the upstream/vcs source), 3) the PKGBUILD is less than 24h old or so. And for #2, it should also show you the changes similar to what you see on the AUR site's "view changes" page. I'm not aware of any aur helper that does these things, but hopefully recent events prompt a change.

You add the rpmfusion repo and install a few nvidia packages from there. Kernel modules are then built for the driver. If secure boot is used, they need to be signed too. Sometimes the grub entry isnt updated and doesnt load nvidia drivers. Sometimes you boot into a black screen, sometimes Wayland throws a hissy fit. Hardware accelerated video decoding needs more packages, in browsers it may need extra configuration..
The components are all there and they work, but sometimes the stars don't align and you just curse a little and wonder why you didn't just buy AMD because that, just works.

My OS is a temple. 🧘

They also have been developing a Linux distribution for 6 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Linux

There is no malware on Linux and there is no war in Ba Sing Se

I've been using Bazzite for a couple of years now and it's great. Almost boring how stable it is.

And I access the AUR with an Arch distrobox if I need to

But Windows has a flourishing antimalware ecosystem. That's missing in Linux imo

I have eset home but now I've gone completely linux, and they don't do it for home - only business

Which sucks, as I have a year left on my subscription I can no longer use :/

Wasn't that long ago when I was downvoted to oblivion for saying that. Glad to see the community is maturing.

clamav gang!

Did clamav work with AUR affected packages? Sorry if the question is idiotic, cause im ignorant when it comes to security

It was certainly a weekend.

I use Arch btw

Out of curiosity, is that actually true? Surely our lord and saviour must have made a tiny slip-up

Edit: Apparently TempleOS doesn't have networking

The most frictionless distro to install nvidia drivers is Aurora. As you get ready to download the ISO, it will provide a couple of drop down menus to select your gpu. Intel/AMD is one and the other lists nvidia gpu's by card to add the correct driver to the ISO. You should be able to install the ISO and boot into your shiny new Plasma desktop with your nvidia gpu working just fine.

And you get the atomic goodness of Fedora Kinonite.

It is networked >!to G̷̗̙͚̥͓̼̠̩͙̀̃̎̌ǫ̷̢͈̭̪̮̝͚̟̹̭̤͇͕̪̍̅̈́͊̌̀̐͌̽d̷̡̮͕͉̥̂̽̔̾̓̋̚͘͠!<

I'm not sure if loosing the maintainer is to only thing we should be going off of here, but I like the name.

It's a couple commands and laid out cookbook style. Fedora has a very good document page on installing nVidia drivers. And the installation is generally very smooth.

The biggest hang up for first time users is understanding that you need to wait for everything to build before doing sudo systemctl reboot. How long do you need to wait? No one really knows. There is no progress bar or any other notification that the building is done successfully. You just wait and then take a leap of faith into that dark abyss and hope for the best.

Typically, it's recommended to wait “at least 5 minutes”. Maybe more. I always waited around 10 minutes, (or one cup of tea) to be sure. But some users reported needing to wait was much as 20 minutes for everything to build. YMMV

Same on Secureblue.

But your brain should be the best antivirus you have.

True of virtually every OS.

But "only stupid people get viruses" is exactly the kind of trap that catches folks.

Well, it is just like a distro maintainer account anyway. If the maintainer account is compromised then gg for the whole distro. That's what happens with other supply chain attacks as well and yes, I do think we need a way to fix that without compromising on ease of usability