It shouldn't be a problem. LFS is entirely self-contained and the only thing you really download are skins, which (I guess) are probably virus scanned when they're uploaded.
+ don't work or play with your administrator account, create and use a user account with restricted rights. This will make your system immune against a lot of viruses out there.
I only use Ad-Aware to get rid of spyware and all that, and then AVG for some protection. Good thing about AVG, is it does'nt really affect performance, compared to nortons, which takes a lifetime to start up.
those are even more useless than anti virus guards (especially the software firewalls)
and by the way ... nat is not a firewall for petes sake
and that is exactly the problem with most users that claim their system is perfectly safe thanks to norton and zonealarm (which is the combo most self proclaimed security experts seem to use) ... they dont even know what theyre doing any why a system has potential vulnerabilities in the first place
hum nop :-) don't worry i'm a technician :-P but i did'nt use a firewall but something in the router is called NAT, it looks like a firewall but its not the same thing, but if you restrain the port redirection, it works like a firewall .... so i did'nt have any anti-virus, and any firewall but no virus since one year, i only erase my computer to clean garbage because i try a lot of thing :-P and a lot of game !!
moueheh they have created a paranoia !! but its like a extended car warranty, its a bet, maybe it will be usefull maybe it will be a waste of cash :-)
your firewall is blocking incoming communication, but not the outgoing communication you need to open LFS port the be able to open a server !!!! if a communication start in your computer the firewall will open a door automaticaly (like if you try to reach website) but if a server or a computer try to reach your computer and the port is not open the firewall will block communication !!
so i'm a french canadian :-) its possible that i make some mistake in my text hehe
Sometimes I feel like the Hulk. All of a sudden this pasty nerd turns green with anger and erupts in a huge pile of non-sensical and unthought-through ranting.
Hold onto your innards, and follow if you can, for you have awoken him.
It will perform very similar functions to that of a firewall, in terms of incoming connections, but in realistic terms it is not truely compariable. All NAT does is simply route packets and disgard those that it cannot.
Here the differences end. Please do not perpetuate this slight expansion on the truth.
There is generally no outgoing connection validation, no packet inspection of any sort, no DDoS protection, etc. etc. Some home routers come with these features, but as usual they're about as useful as a chocolate fireguard or unused. Take a look at any stock DG834(G) deployed by Sky, or AOL, in the UK. Most are fairly unconfigured. Many still use default usernames and passwords (that I've recently come across). Consider that all you need to do is make a simple socket connection and post load of data to the router and they have full access to it!
How many times have people here walked into a WiFi "hotspot" and connected to unsecured WiFi, or WiFi using a default password? More than you might imagine.
In most cases home users are being causght out by their own mistakes/ignorance. This, with the prevalence of UPnP being on by default, and NAT punching techniques, means that it's still perfectly valid to have a firewall on a system within the private IP range. If you ignore that, you've at least got no idea what any person with a laptop might bring back with them onto your network, if they've been out and about.
Now this isn't to say that I think everyone should be running firewalls, and certainly not AV. I personally consider AV to be ridiculous in many circumstances. Compare it to going to the doctor and asking for an injection for every known disease and illness known to man. You'd come out with about 4 pints of extra fluid in your body and be completely useless as it'd interact and have adverse effects.
If you get ill you take yourself to the Doctor or self prescribe yourself something. The only reasons why people don't do this with computers are;
1. There are no true "Doctors" for computers
2. Many consumers think that they need AV
3. Lack of decent firewalling - primarily because it's an inconvenience, or too complex
Now, I'm not suggesting that everyone should run decent firewalls either, but if you're unaware of what you're doing, then it's probably a good idea.
The Netgear does have a true firewall DG834 (earlier ones didnt), you turn NAT off and the firewall is still functioning. In fact its just iptables, in some extreme scenarios I have to telnet on and just run the commands manually.
I didn't mention that the DG834 didn't support it. Only that it was predominately unconfigured. Perhaps I should've made it clearer that I mentioned it, because despite it being one of the exceptions to prove the rule, I'd put money on the fact that the output table is still unused in the vast majority of instances. For this reason, it still merits to have a firewall configured at the desktop level.
I switched from AVG to Avast! when AVG kept getting too many false positives. It's really scary to your employer when one morning all the computers running QuickBooks 2005 Premiere are warning that Quickbooks is a virus! Turns out later that day it was a false positive.
That and Avast! performs a bit better, auto updates fully in the background, only telling you it's done with a little pop up at the tray and a voice. No window that you have to click OK comes up or anything.
Of course, the best part of Avast! is the warning when you DO get a virus. While most AV programs give you a warning box this one not only gives you the warning but has a red alert alarm go off and it says "Warning! A virus has been detected!"
As one person told me it was reminiscent of Lost In Space. "Danger, Will Robinson! Aliens approaching!" he says.