I just want to add that you that you can also setup multiple user accounts for different uses. One for banking, one for gaming, one for downloading random crap. It will not protect against privilege escalation attacks but will help against random scripts exfiltrating your personal documents.

Another nice layer is containers and containerized applications (flatpaks, bubblewrap, etc). Each app will be somewhat limited in what damage it can do.

Running pi-hole as your DNS or using some other filtered DNS provider (Mulvad or others) will also protect you from some shady sites.

l have installed ClamTK, but just because my bank has explicitly written in its terms of use that “an antivirus program has to be installed on the PC used for online banking.”
So I installed one to comply. But that’s it…

That is an old myth. There are less viruses for Linux because there are less users. But if you do things like install priated games, you have the same risk as on windows

If you don’t need on-access scanning - and just want manual scanning of individual files that you’ve downloaded before you execute them, you can use Lenspect (available on flathub) which submits files to virustotal.com https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.vmkspv.lenspect

Clamav is ok to use for scanning files for malware. If you want something to detect behavior you can use Falco or tetragon to log events on your system. Those systems are best used if you send them to centralized log system but that’s complete overkill for personal use

Ultimately, it’s going to be down to your risk profile. What do you have on your machine which would wouldn’t want to lose or have released publicly? For many folks, we have things like pictures and personal documents which we would be rather upset about if they ended up ransomed. And sadly, ransomware exists for Linux. Lockbit, for example is known to have a Linux variant. And this is something which does not require root access to do damage. Most of the stuff you care about as a user exists in user space and is therefore susceptible to malware running in a user context.

The upshot is that due care can prevent a lot of malware. Don’t download pirated software, don’t run random scripts/binaries you find on the internet, watch for scam sites trying to convince you to paste random bash commands into the console (Clickfix is after Linux now). But, people make mistakes and it’s entirely possible you’ll make one and get nailed. If you feel the need to pull stuff down from the internet regularly, you might want to have something running as a last line of defense.

That said, ClamAV is probably sufficient. It has a real-time scanning daemon and you can run regular, scheduled scans. For most home users, that’s enough. It won’t catch anything truly novel, but most people don’t get hit by the truly novel stuff. It’s more likely you’ll be browsing for porn/pirated movies and either get served a Clickfix/Fake AV page or you’ll get tricked into running a binary you thought was a movie. Most of these will be known attacks and should be caught by A/V. Of course, nothing is perfect. So, have good backups as well.

I think the security thing is very arguable at this point. Windows and macos are both extremely secure (from threats external to the companies that made them).

Linux still has heavy reliance on running install scripts as root. Flatpak avoids that but has its own issues. Docker has its own suite of issues. Snap is just issues.

The best anti-virus is your brain.

I run ClamAV regularly, and it has not found anything on my several systems in the last 20 years. Good to know we’re safe, or are we?

I’m more concerned about rogue browser extensions that may be innocent when you install them, but then change owners, and after an update that you don’t even notice are going to do bad things.

DISCLAIMER
I am not a computer security expert, merely a hobbist having read some blogs from people who sounded smart. It is more than probable than I am mistaken in one or more parts of this post.

Linux is not more secure than Windows. By default, it’s actually considerably more vulnerable than Windows. Source

In my opinion an antivirus doesn’t really solve your problem. What you actually want is sandboxing, which means restricting user and program privileges. I recommend getting familiar with SELinux (or alternatively AppArmor, although it isn’t nearly as effective) and bubblewrap (or alernatively Firejail, which requires root privileges to run and is thus a bigger threat vector than bubblewrap).

Aside from that just disable any service you aren’t using (like ssh), use a deny-all-allow-some firewall, and verify what you download. If the link says “100% REAL 1 MILLION FREE ROBUX DOWNLOAD CLICK HERE NOW”, then maybe don’t click there.

Because even an antivirus won’t help you if you download malware, which isn’t compiled by skids who lifted the code from some darknet hacker forum. Antivirus isn’t some magical tool which makes your computer inherently more secure. Meaning you can’t offload your responsibilty to a program running with kernel level privileges. Your computer, your responsibilty.

P.S: If you want a more secure computer, I’d recommend a minimal and/or rolling release distro (openSUSE, Arch, Void, Debian) or FreeBSD/OpenBSD (BSD variants mitigate many of Linux’s inherent flaws).

Linux Antivirus is a very specific niche. It’s mostly there to scan for Windows viruses and malware. So your Linux mailserver for example (or storage system) filters those out before they appear on your employee’s computers.

What you’d instead do in Linux is harden your webserver, keep the webservices you host up to date and have some monitoring. And keep an eye on supply chain attacks if you’re a developer. Because that’s how attacks against Linux work. I’ve been scolded for saying this on Lemmy, but to this date, desktop computer malware isn’t really a thing with Linux. Attacks almost exclusively target webservers and Internet of Things devices, routers and so on.

So an Antivirus on a destop computer isn’t going to do much, due to the lack of malware which works that way. It could do something if you run Proton or Wine and run Windows programs in Linux.

If you want to do something for security, learn not to copy-paste stuff into the command line. Don’t run executables from random places of the internet. Try to rely on your distribution’s package repository. Do automatic updates, and generally do timely updates, especially with the webbrowser and stuff that’s reachable from outside. Set strong passwords. And don’t neglect your backups. Your harddisk is bound to fail anyway, eventually. I think that’s going to get you 99% of the way. Installing an antivirus is only the next 0.2%.

Really if you use the centralized repos for installs there is as close to no risk as there could be, I wouldn’t even expend energy on this problem.

Install the apparmor profiles and extra profiles packages from the apt repository. They are sensible restrictions on common apps (web browsers) to prevent anything malicious from happening if they are ever hijacked. Make sure apparmor is enabled. This will do more to keep you secure than an antivirus. Maybe run your browser in a firejail for extra security.

If you insist on an AV, install ClamAV and have it scan weekly. It’s libre software and works well with Linux.

None at all tbh, at least if you use the PC alone and don’t share a lot of stuff with Windows devices. If you do, then maybe scan .exe or other files (e-mail attatchments, etc.) with ClamAV or similar to prevent spreading stuff.

You usually don’t need AV software because you install stuff differently than on Windows. You don’t hunt .exe-files from random internet sites, thats irresponsible even for Windows.

You install your apps directly from your software center (a frontend for Flatpaks and repo software), where they usually are pretty safe.

Also, sandboxing is a thing. The prefered way for most people (and often default) is via Flatpak, where apps are restricted on what they can access and do. You can lock them down even further if you want.

There are more ways of sandboxing, but those are not so relevant here right now.

Also:

• If you run a script, check it first. I have zero clue in regards of coding, but even I can usually guess what each line is supposed to do.
• Don’t add 3rd party repos if you can, use containers instead
• Go for the easiest route, guides for “Linux” aren’t noob friendly. In your case, search for “Mint” instead, most stuff is pretty easy there.

Linux relases of commercial antivirus editors do catch linux malware binaries, and platform specitic threats. Like crypto miners, webshells on your selfhosted part of the Internet, javascript malware (pretty much living in the browser, OS agnostic)…