What is the best open source anti-virus software for windows? My Norton subscription is expensive, and I'd like to switch over to an open source anti-virus.

I'm not very knowledgeable regarding Open Source software, so I could be wrong about this. But I do keep up with security software, in general (nothing technical). And I'm not sure there IS an open source AV. There are a couple of freeware ones out there, but I'm not sure about open source.

Have you tried googling?

You can find a couple listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_antivirus_software but I as much as I like open source software, when it comes to protecting my computer from viruses I would favour effectiveness over openess. I personally use AVG Free Edition but I know that Avira AntiVir Personal is a very effective scanner also.

The best open source antivirus is Linux. Install it and voila, no more viruses

bbyak wrote:The best open source antivirus is Linux. Install it and voila, no more viruses

Totally agree

Back when I was on windows I tried AVG and avast but some nasties still got through. In my experience nothing beats Zone Alarm, if you have windows you just have to use ZA too (the whole suite). Last time I checked there were some free downloads available from ZoneLabs, not sure if anti virus is among them. Go check it out, it may not be open source but you may find there's a free version.

What's the best website to download good antivirus for free? My PC has been infected and i now need an antivirus to treat it and then protect it as i always am on the internet.

Hey, I was wondering about open-source AV few days ago. I agree with both bbyak and microUgly - Open-source means that everyone can change and redistribute it, witch is exactly what we don't want Anti-virus to be. About a week or two ago I was using AVG free, but it caused my Windows to crash very frequently (but only when I'm browsing) - it happened almost each time I visit a 'complex' web-site (like Facebook). So I installed avast! and it doesn't happen anymore. Furthermore, I browsed an infected site the same day when I installed avast!, and it protected me. (the site had an element from hit-senders.cn - WOT scorecard)

pinari wrote:What's the best website to download good antivirus for free? My PC has been infected and i now need an antivirus to treat it and then protect it as i always am on the internet.

Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and SUPERAntiSpyware and scan your computer. After you remove your infection(s), you need a real-time protection. Best free real-time anti-viruses are AVG, avast! and Avira. I would leave others to say witch one is best.

clamav is an open source product, and they have a windows port called clamwin. It works well, has a huge installed base, and provides up to date virus dat files. it works not because everyone changes it, but because everyone tests it. It has recently been adopted by a commercial company (meaning they pay developers to continue to improve the open source software, and continue to distribute the source code.) http://www.clamwin.com/

Oh, you're right, I forgot about ClamWin. I got it with PortableApps, but I actually never used it (maybe I just scanned for some file to see how does it look like). Still, it doesn't provide real-time protection like AVG, avast!, Avira and other free AVs, so it's not very suitable for dialy use. Avast! has a Linux edition. ClamWin is small (portable) so it's good to have it on your flash drive in case you need to scan something.

Yeah Clam AV is available from portableapps in their PAF format you can run it from a USB or o your PC but if you are using windows I would recomenr Antivir its not open source but the free version has a rootkit scanner and a guard system that checks files for signatures before there run. It also has a great detection rate.

Well, most people rang free antiviruses like this:
1. Avira AntiVir - they say it has the best detection but that it shows ads inside program
2. avast! - it wastes much resources (like RAM)
3. AVG Free - people say it has bad detection

Here is my opinion:
Avira AntiVir - I never tried it
avast! - it does waste more resources than AVG, but it is a problem only on slower PCs. I like that it has a slider that affects detection sensitivity, so when I am unsure if certain site is safe, I move it to "High". And I like those alerts and voice.
AVG Free - nice user interface, but it caused me problems and I'm not going back on it (at least not on this computer). Besides, you can't control detection sensitivity.