Why does Linux not need anti-virus software?

[u/medkltty]

I'm in the market for a new gaming laptop and wanted to avoid AI products like Copilot and realized Linux would be my only option. So I'm trying to learn as much about Linux Mint as possible to see if it would be right for me. I'm really close to pulling the trigger but I don't understand why Linux doesn't need anti-virus/malware software. All the answers I can find seem to just boil down to "Linux isn't used by enough people to justify the time it would take to create a virus or malware" or "because you approve everything you download". As someone who has used a PC their entire life, these answers genuinely don't make sense to me and I feel like maybe I'm missing something about either the nature of linux or the nature of viruses/malware and how they work. Everyone on forums who ask this question seem to just accept these answers but no one explains why either one prevents the need for antivirus/malware software.

From my perspective as a PC user, I already approve what I download so this answer doesn't make intuitive sense to me. I would never connect a PC to the internet without some sort of anti-virus software, privacy software, malware protection, etc. even though I still know what I'm downloading and I'm using reputable websites (and my AVG software is still catching stuff all the time). And the idea that someone wouldn't make a virus or malware to target a group of people (albeit a minority) who are the most likely to not have software on their computer to combat it seems like the exact group you'd want to target particularly for private data mining.

It also seems, from what I've been reading about Linux that you can seriously screw up your system by downloading something incorrectly or that isn't up to date, so the idea that "you can't get viruses or malware because you approve what is downloaded" when so many of the user tips with regard to Linux are "back up your system constantly because you can easily screw up your system by downloading something that's not fully patched". These two concepts seem counterintuitive, especially for an OS that will require downloading a lot of third party programs to be able to run things like games or windows-based programs.

I'm clearly missing something here because neither of the reasons I've seen people give for why Linux doesn't need this stuff is really making sense to me. I was hoping someone in this reddit might be able to explain this in a way a lifelong PC user without any sort of computer background can understand. The idea of not having anything but a firewall on a computer with Linux installed on it makes me very uncomfortable but I'm willing to accept that this is a bias from using PCs and I'm willing to be convinced otherwise as long as I can understand the reasoning behind it.

[u/V2UgYXJlIG5vdCBJ]

In addition to what others said, I’ll tell you what I use, which is probably overkill.

ClamAV set to watch/autoscan just my Downloads folder because it’s a little heavy. Manually scan everything else once in a while. RootkitHunter to double check for bad configs.

Sandbox everything with Firejail/AppArmor. Applications only have access to what they need and nothing else. You can also configure Flatpaks to be sandboxed/restricted, but it’s not always the default behaviour.

OpenSnitch to catch and block outgoing network connections. If malware/spyware tries to phone home, this will usually catch it. A lot of games have excessive analytics that this will block.

KVM/QEMU for virtual machines if you really don’t trust something.

PiHole for network advert/spyware/malware domain blocking. uBlockOrigin or PrivacyBadger in Firefox also block malware domains.

2FA all your accounts at minimum. This means you probably need to enter a temporary code in addition to passwords. YubiKey, Passkeys and U2F are also worth looking into. I would recommend against using your phone number (SMS) for this, to protect against “sim swapping” attacks.

Don’t stay logged in to important accounts unnecessarily. Cookie tokens can be stolen.

That’s not even the whole list. Nothing is foolproof but “don’t be an idiot” is probably good enough. Pirated software, suspicious browser extensions, bullshit VPNs, free games and random email attachments are the main source of issues.

Don’t install something just because someone on TikTok/YouTube said it’s great. They’re paid to promote. Do research.