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Virex 7.2 Hazardous to Fink's Health
Gorgonzola writes "It was reported that Virex 7.2 and Fink were conflicting, it turned out that Virex 7.2 was overwriting libraries in Fink's default directory, thus hosing Fink for those who had it installed, and preventing Fink from installing for future users. Also, one user pointed out that of Virux's included packages, several (CURL, OpenSSL, and DLCompat) had license terms that Virex was ignoring." It is strongly recommended you don't install Virex 7.2 until this issue is resolved.
Someone asked me the other day what was the best virus protection tool for MacOS X as they were planning an upgrade.
I scratched my head for a minute, did some checking on Symantic & McAfee's sites and realized that the Mac platform (OS X & 9 both included) hasn't seen a virus since 1997 -- the last of those autostart beasties (which still occasionally pop up on service bureau Zips).
The relative lack of critters, and just basic common sense keep virii off my Macs.
My Wintel boxes, however, have to live with the 20% system overhead bloat that is Norton Antivirus, coupled with Spybot S&D running at launch.
I asked this on macslash too and nobody gave an answer - can anybody name a single OS X virus or worm that a tool like Virex actually prevents? Why do I want to waste my time scanning for Windows viruses that won't hurt my machine and won't be transmitted to other machines unless I am enough of a moron to forward random .vbs files from emails asking for advice or offering to play a very excite game? Word macro viruses exist but it's easier to turn off macros in word than to scan every document. Why would anyone want to install Virex at all? Is it just for the psychological comfort of seeing a program tell you your system is safe?