Dear usergroup

I have just purchased Mandriva Linux 2007 from a cheap internet site in the UK. I've not installed it yet, but I have been reading on the news about the spread of botnets, trojans etc. I've also looked in Google at issue with botnets and Linux and some sites/blogs state that Linux is not 100% infallable. I've also read about people in China buying cheap, pirated software of Windows operating systems which have pre-installed trojans.

Perhaps I'm a bit paranoid, but is it possible that some of the Linux OS you can buy cheap from websites have trojans etc. in them?
I am definitely a Linux newbie (and always will be) and when it comes to using Klamav I don't really know what I'm doing. (It says I must use a path or something and then when I click on one of the boxes listed it still doesn't work.)

Ha, ha! I'm a hopeless case! I would appreciate any advice/knowledge regarding this issue.

Thanks again,

doody

There are currently no REAL linux viruses known- just a few macros for apps like OpenOffice, which may destroy a certain type of user data, but the system will run fine.
Linux is free, and does not need any antivirus currently- klamav serves as protection for windoze clients that connect to your Linux machine, and not as a native protection.

I have purchased Mandriva Linux from a cheap internet site in the US (CheapBytes) without any problem.

That said, if you have high speed internet access there is probably no need to do this. Download the free version(s) and update with urpmi.

It's possible, but not likely. If you bought it from a reputable place (such as cheap bytes) you likely have nothing to worry about.

No OS is infallible. They all have security holes, somewhere, but it's a matter of ease of exploitation. Linux tends to be harder to exploit than Windows because of the separation between user and system.

What you read online about trojans and all that is mainly for the windows world. I've been runnin linux distros for awhile now and have not bumped into a trojan, spyware, or anything for linux so there are no worries. I only run a tightly maintained firewall and thats it.

It is very difficult to make a Trojan-like virus for Linux and I doubt anyone would want to, unless they were attempting to hack something like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and then they would be up for a serious challenge.

You really do not need to worry about viruses in Linux yet - not enough people use it for the people who make viruses to care. They're more interested in turning Windows machines into bot-nodes for sending spam and the like.

The site you bought your copy of Mandriva from probably downloads isos and burns them for sale (this is perfectly legal, of course), unless you bought an official boxed version.

Either way, feel free to proceed with an installation - the chances of a virus are virtually nil.

adding to the above....

The most reliable install is downloaded from the distro site and checked with the MD5...
Its unknown for a major distro to have any spy/trojan virus this way...
Next most relaible is most distro's also have recommended places to buy... some like Debian from non profit, Ubuntu for free, even postage etc.
Next cheap bytes etc. its thier business and it would be really stupid of them to add a virus like anything, it would be on the internet in hours and they would neve4r sell another CD.. (well barely)