Grisoft, makers of the popular AVG Anti-Virus offering, has warned that it is "only a matter of time" before Linux becomes widely targeted by virus and malware writers.

Michael Foreman, a partner at AVG UK, said: "In the past few years we have seen the use of enterprise Linux applications growing steadily, and it is only a matter of time before we can expect to see virus attacks specifically targeted at these users.

"Grisoft is one of the first mainstream antivirus vendors to have started a whole new division dedicated to Linux protection."

The firm is preparing to launch what it claims is the first commercially developed Linux antivirus product to be available free for Linux users.

According to Grisoft, AVG Free Edition for Linux is the only program for Linux that self-updates the software, as well as checking for the latest virus updates.

"Most of the well-known antivirus vendors are not focusing on the open source market as it only accounts for a fraction of their sales," said Foreman.

Grisoft started sponsoring students working on Linux development at the University of Brno in the Czech Republic earlier this year, and is participating in the RedirFS open source project for file system access control in Linux kernels.