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02/03/2006 Archived Entry: "New antivirus and database software for Linux"

The Nyxem virus prompted me to revisit our defenses. I'm pleased to see two more antivirus packages for desktop Linux. Grisoft has released a Linux version of their popular AVG Free software. Unfortunately, only Mandrake 10.0 and higher, SuSE 9.1 and higher, and Fedora Core are supported "out of the box", so I won't be trying it soon. (It's possible that I could run it, but I'll have to check that I have all the prerequisite packages.)

And AntiVir has released their Classic (freeware) scanner for Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. You need to know how to unpack a .tgz archive, and run an install script, but it installed without problems, and seems to work quite well on Xandros Linux. (This scanner is also available for Windows.)

Speaking of free software, IBM has released a "cut down" version of their DB2 database, called DB2 Express-C. This is a smart business decision: small businesses can use a free database system that can be expanded later to a major enterprise using the paid DB2 product. Unlike Microsoft's SQLServer Express, DB2 Express-C is available for Windows and Linux...so this helps the open-source community, and helps Windows users anticipating future migration to Linux.

Which reminds me...going through some old bookmarks, I discovered that the table of Linux equivalents for Windows software has moved. It's a very useful resource; I salute those who compile and maintain it.  —brad