I’ve seen good answers here but I just wanted to chime in as I’m a newer Linux user and as I’m learning more from running Fedora as my daily driver instead of Windows, I’m learning a lot and hope to help others learn as well.
Typically, most common software that you want to use will be in the repo for your distro or in a flatpak of some kind. If you’re downloading from your distributions repo, your typically not going to encounter viruses. Flatpaks are also generally safe as theyre sandboxed so the interactions they have with your system are generally read only.
That said, still use caution. Don’t run commands that you find online unless you know what they do, use ublock like you mentioned you already do, only download software from trusted sources and use the checksum to verify the files integrity and safety.
From the sound of it, you’re already doing what you should be, just wanted to add this if there were any other very new users with similar concerns about viruses.
Yea thats part of the reason I said generally. As I said, newer to linux and still learning but flatpaks can be more secure because they are sandboxed is my understanding.
That said, you’re not wrong to point it out. Sandboxes arent the be all end all to security of course. Any security is defeated if the end user doesn’t use logic and practice saftey when it comes to downloading any software.