content: A virus is a malicious program.  It can be downloaded over any file transfer protocol.  It spreads when dumb niggers (especially those who use Winblows) download porn games and shit they don't understand, and execute programs on their computer with sufficient privilege to do harm.  Unless your Web browser is buggy as shit, you can't get a virus from viewing a Web-site (including images and video), only from executing programs. Smart people are super-duper-careful about the programs they execute.  Linux/BSD distros provide a central repository of cryptographically signed packages, which are built from source and studied by millions of nerds all over the world, any one of whom can blow a whistle about any security problems. I also have dozens of different user accounts on my system, so that programs cannot access more than the absolute bare minimum.  One user for editing images, one for surfing the Web, one for each programming environment (with compiler + customized vim setup), one for the media player, one for each P2P service, etc.  Users can't see each-other's private files or execute apps they're not supposed to.  I restrict which users can access the Internet, the Xorg GUI (ex to spy on clipboard contents), cpu / ram / banwdwidth caps, etc.  And the most important stuff (like crypto wallets and keys to sync to my remote servers) are stored on separate devices entirely, copied by physically moving microSD cards.  So malicious code would do minimum possible harm.