Now, before you begin this journey with Bitdefender, know that this tool is not free, nor open source. The Linux port of Bitdefender is proprietary and you will have to pay for a license. There is a trial license to use to see if this tool is worth purchasing. I think, after using it, you will find it is worth the purchase price.

In this article I will show you how to install and use Bitdefender on Linux.

Before we begin

You might be asking yourself Why would I purchase a proprietary antivirus software for Linux?” I have often advocated one of the best solutions for disinfecting a Windows drive is to remove that drive and attach it to a Linux machine and run an antivirus software on the mounted drive. Bitdfefender is a perfect solution for that task. With a proprietary software you will remain up to date on virus definitions as well as have the support of the company that makes the software. These are must-haves in the world of business. Why not have them at home as well?

Installation

The installation of Bitdefender is simple. Download the executable binary installation file and save it in your ~/Downloads directory. Now follow these steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Give the newly downloaded file executable permissions with the command chmod u+x BitDefender-Antivirus-XXX.run Where XXX is the release number.
3. Issue the command sudo./BitDefender-Antivirus-XXX.run (Where XXX is the release number) to install the software.
4. Agree to the license.
5. Allow the installation tool to install the GUI package.
6. That’s it. You are now ready to run BitDefender.

Usage

Figure 1

To run the BitDefender GUI you can issue the command bdgui, which will open up the main window (see Figure 1). As you can see, the GUI is very reminiscent of any given Windows antivirus GUI.

One of the first things you should do is run a definitions update. This is done by clicking the Update button. When you do that a small window will open giving you the progress of the update. The download can be fairly large so give it plenty of time to finish.

To run a scan you simple click on the Scanner button and then, in the new window, select the directory you want to scan. Of course, should you want to scan your entire Linux machine you would select / (the root directory) for scanning.

I will warn you. On my systems I tend to retain a lot of distribution ISO files (for testing and  so on). These take a LONG time to scan, so you might want to set the *iso extension as an exception to scanning (if you trust your iso sources of course).

Final thoughts

Outside of that, you will find the BitDefender antivirus solution as simple to use as its Windows counterparts. The GUI is well designed and the product works exactly as you would expect. If you are looking for an antivirus that is user-friendly and reliable, but for the Linux operating system, BitDefender might be your tool.

An Internet connection is needed on the other hand to perform the scan which sometimes can be a problem if the system is not booting into the operating system. A Live CD could help but many Online Virus Scanners demand the Internet Explorer which is obviously unavailable on Linux systems.

Online Virus Scanners can be used to get a “second opinion” without having to install another anti-virus software on the computer. It is probably a good idea to use as many of the virus scanners as possible if it is suspected that the system was infected by a virus. Below is a list of services that provide access to online virus scanners.

Bitdefender Online Scanner – requires Internet Explorer 4+

Eset Online Scanner – requires Internet Explorer

F-Secure Online Scanner – works only with Internet Explorer 6+

Kaspersky Free Virus Scan – browser independent, downloads roughly 25 Megabytes of files prior to scanning. User can select locations to scan. The scanner does not remove infected files.

McAfee FreeScan – requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5+

Microsoft OneCare Live – requires Internet Explorer.

Panda ActiveScan – requires Internet Explorer or Firefox, does not run in Opera.

Shields Up! – browser independent but very slow and unresponsive currently.

Symantec Security Check – down or gone.

Trendsecure HouseCall – Java based scanner, works with Java compatible browsers.

Windows Security – Trojan scan that requires Internet Explorer 5+

File Scanners:

Avast Online Scanner – file size limit of 512 Kilobyte

Virus Scan – file size limit of 10 Megabyte.

Virus Total – email upload option, 10 Megabyte file size limit.

Do you know any other services where users can scan files or the computer ?