By installing the antivirus it can avoid being exposed to malware, which must be reminded here are the users or brainware. Most of those who are infected with a virus on their computer devices because the users do not understand very well what will be downloaded, installed on their devices. Now also a lot of anti-virus that can be used for anti-malware, once again that the brainware must understand very well what will be done to the computer device because malware should be very easy to handle.
Agree, antivirus can detect the presence of malware so we can anticipate if there is suspicious malware on our computer. But in my opinion, the safest way is not to visit websites that look suspicious or unfamiliar because malware can be nested on the website
Currently I use Ubuntu because it has a higher level of protection from some types of internet attacks. 