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What is Penguin Pills?
Penguin Pills provides a graphical interface for a number of Linux command line anti-virus scanners. The Penguin Pills GUI offers drag and drop file scanning, context menu scanning, simplified signature updating and easy access from a systray icon. Penguin Pills is not an anti-virus scanner nor does it come packaged with any 3rd party AV scanner. It is merely an interface through which you can control ANY 3rd party command line scanner. The scanners, their paths, supported parameters and updater paths are defined using xml templates. There are multiple templates included in Penguin Pills by default but additional scanners can be configured by simply creating a new xml template and dropping it into the ~/.penguinpills/scanners folder.
Anti-virus on Linux?
Regardless of how safe the Linux platform may be there are still numerous reasons to install anti-virus software on your system. The most obvious reason is that the majority of computers still have some form of the Windows platform installed on them. And even if a virus can't infect your pc it doesn't mean that you can't accidentally infect someone else's system by emailing an infected file to them. It is also possible to infect a WINE installation or a virtual machine through a shared folder. If there's any doubt at all that a file might not be safe just scan it. Compared to the alternative outcomes it seems like a relatively minor inconvenience to run an anti-virus scan regardless of your operating system. Click here for additional info on Linux anti-virus software.
Why do these AV scanners need a GUI?
I frequently rely on 2 different ondemand command line scanners to scan a variety of file types. I had been searching for a quicker way to select and scan files and folders by both scanners. After writing and testing a couple of bash scripts I finally decided that what was needed was drag and drop functionality, context menu integration and the ability to switch between scanners quickly. The result has evolved into what is now Penguin Pills.
How can I help with this project?
The best way to help with this project is to help track any changes made to the scanners supported by Penguin Pills. That includes the download urls, license registration links, installation instructions and supported scanner parameters. If you notice that any of the information on this site related to a specific scanner needs to be changed please post the new information in the forum so that I can keep this site up to date with the latest scanner releases.
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