There’s been a stir in the Mac world recently about whether or not antivirus software is necessary for OS X, mainly due to Apple’s “release” of a support article detailing their encouragement of the “widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities”. According to this Gizmodo article, the support article was actually an older article recently updated to include the latest versions of the antivirus software mentioned. There are plenty more articles about this support article and the use of antivirus software on Macs, and I won’t get into them. I’ll leave that to Lifehacker, PC Magazine, and CNet.

I decided to check out the free antivirus software options for the Mac. I’ve been using AVG’s free package on PCs for a while with success. There is no version for the Mac, but there is ClamXav. It’s based on the open-source virus scanner engine called Clam AntiVirus. The installation is fairly simple, apart from the installation of the Clam AV engine separately. I did have to log-out and log back in for the engine to install successfully.

ClamXav is barebones and simple. You tell it what to scan, and it does the job. The preferences are straightforward, including options to schedule scans, and add folders to the “Folder Sentry” to be scanned continuously, for example, your downloads folder.

Until there’s a real virus threat to Mac users, ClamXav is a great option for those not willing to shell out any cash (or clams) yet.