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Howdy guys. I've just got a new PC, and am dual booting it (windows 10 and arch linux).
However, seeing as I've never spent much time with micro$oft, I'm rather behind times on antivirus products.

Any suggested software? Or can I just ignore it entirely?

There is just so many of them out there, and everyone has a different opinion. My only advice is stay away from Baidu, Clam AV, IO Bit Malware Fighter, and Vipre. The detection rate with those are complete crap.

I use AVG Free.

No amount of antivirus software is a substitute for user awareness and being careful about what you download or run from the web. At the end of the day, antivirus software simply doesn't work anywhere near as well as many people think.

For what its worth, Windows 10 includes Windows Defender by default if no other antivirus software is installed, its detection rates are pretty mediocre but it has a minimal resource usage advantage over a lot of other names. The best I've seen for resource usage while having decent detection rates was the basic paid ESET NOD32. Anything Nortion/Symantec is awful and bloated. Mcafee doesn't stand out in any way good or bad. Avira and AVG are free but nag you endlessly.

Going to second what Krom said. Things like keeping your OS/Browsing software up to date, minimizing attack surface by removing/disabling plugins, running some form of ad blocking, and just generally thinking before you click will be better real time protection than definition based AV products can provide.

On Windows 7, I used EMET, but it looks like they folded most of those protections into Windows 10. I don't use any AV software past Windows Defender on my desktop. (Windows 10) When I need to open something I'm unsure of, which isn't often, I use virustotal.com for scanning. If I need to browse shady sites, I do it in a Virtualbox VM. (currently Ubuntu Mate)

I've been running MS Security Essentials on XP/7 for more than half a decade now, and I plan to continue along with MS Defender if/when I set up a 10 install. I can't remember the last time I've even had a sniff of infection on my system *knock on head*.

Vander wrote:On Windows 7, I used EMET, but it looks like they folded most of those protections into Windows 10. I don't use any AV software past Windows Defender on my desktop. (Windows 10) When I need to open something I'm unsure of, which isn't often, I use virustotal.com for scanning. If I need to browse shady sites, I do it in a Virtualbox VM. (currently Ubuntu Mate)

Yeah. EMET is kind of pointless now for Windows 10. Many of the techniques used to protect IE don't apply to Edge.

I was using EMET until version 5.0 in Windows 8 and I had to get rid of it. Comodo Defense+ and EMET had to many compatibility issue at the time. Now I'm using HitmanPro.Alert and it works flawlessly with my security setup in Windows 10.

Edge discovered that other way of making a browser more secure: don't support anything.

I'm using ESET and Malwarebytes.

Avast here. Not great, but decent.

Panda's detection seemed better, but I prefer local heuristic scanning as opposed to cloud-based scans (bandwidth).

And, if you use multiple computers, Avast for Business is free. In addition to the desktop app, it provides a web-based central management console, which can be handy.

For smaller file(s): to be extra safe, upload to virustotal.com before doing anything with it and always select "reanalyse".

And Malwarebytes.

I use Symantec Endpoint Protection. It has a 100% detection rate and has continuous updating. It also is very light. Better yet, the license never expires for unmanaged client installations. See here.

Aggressor Prime wrote:I use Symantec Endpoint Protection. It has a 100% detection rate and has continuous updating. It also is very light. Better yet, the license never expires for unmanaged client installations. See here.

You might be interested in A/V Comparatives test results too.
http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-conte ... sym_en.pdf