How To Install AVG Free Antivirus on Ubuntu

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install AVG Free Antivirus on Ubuntu. For those of you who didn’t know, AVG Free is a version of the AVG anti-virus, spyware, and malware protection software that is free for private and non-commercial use.  It helps you avoid spyware and other harmful unwanted viruses. Unfortunately, AVG doesn’t provide you simple user graphic interface but you still be able to run it in text mode on the terminal.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple. I will show you through the step-by-step installation avg free antivirus on the Ubuntu system.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu Linux.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• An active internet connection. You’ll need an internet connection to download the necessary packages and dependencies for AVG.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install AVG Free Antivirus on Ubuntu

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt commands in the terminal.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Step 2. Install AVG Free package on Ubuntu Linux.

By default, the AVG Anti Virus is not available on Ubuntu 22.04 base repository. Now run the following command below to download the AVG installer package using wget command:

wget http://download.avgfree.com/filedir/inst/avg2013flx-r3118-a6926.i386.deb

After downloading the package installer, now the following the command to install AVG Anti-Virus on Ubuntu:

sudo dpkg -i avg2013flx-r3118-a6926.i386.deb

After installing the package, update the virus definitions by running:

sudo avgupdate

Step 3. Configure AVG Anti-Virus.

As you see in the installation method on Ubuntu, AVG is installed and started, but not configured. Run the following command to configure AVG Free to scan your emails for known viruses, spyware, and other malware:

/opt/avg/av/bin/avgsetup

Step 4. Scan files and directories using AVG.

You can scan files and directories on-demand by running avgscan. Avg scan is a command-line anti-virus scanner:

-l, --heal Automatically heal infected object.
-t, --delete Automatically delete infected object.
-u, --vv-move Automatically move infected object into vault.
-U, --vv-backup Backup infected object if healed by deletion.

Example scanning:

Scan /home directory and its sub-directories recursively and store the report in the /var/log/avgscan.log file, run the following command:

avgscan -aPcijk -r /var/log/avgscan.log /home

Congratulations! You have successfully installed AVG free anti-virus. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing AVG free antivirus on Ubuntu systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official AVG website.