>>http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/internet/06/13/picture.virus.ap/index.html
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>AV software will not be an economically viable business on the Linux OS, and I think they are beginning to realize it. In five years of using Linux I have never had a successful viri attack on my box. In my mailbox I have had countless WinXX viri trigger harmlessly or fail to trigger at all. It makes doing a post mortum easy and risk free. Under WINE, I once fired the SirCam viri just to see it work. It was easy to follow and the results were easy to reverse. All the changes stood out like a sore thumb, and none could in any way affect the Linux installation. In fact, only those who run their Linux installation as 'root' or have no root password, which are really stupid things to do, will ever be affected by a linux virus, if a serious one ever appears. The worst thing that could happen is the a user's account files are deleted, which would take all of 30 seconds to recreate, and a minute or two to restore other files from backups.
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>JLK

Of course one other reason why AV software is not economically viable in the Linux environment is because it has not reached the masses of the end-user market. I don't think the reason is because Linux is somehow intrinsically virus-resistant. Let us not forget that the whole hacker and trojan horse thing was born in the Unix environment.

They might not spread in the same way, attack in the same way or even be called the same (virus vs trojan or backdoor, generally) but they are out there.