Maybe it's a stupid question but can infected data from a windows system damage a linux system?

This is what I did:

I had a computer infection on a Windows 2000 machine.
I removed the infected data.
I ran clamwin again, no infections.
Nevertheless I wanted to install Linux.
I saved some data. Holiday pictures.
I installed bodhi linux, removed the windows installation.
I installed clamav for linux.

If there now just might be something on that usb thumb-drive that clamwin has not detected, can it infect bodhi.?
Can I even read that thumbdrive by the way, I have not tried that yet.

Most executable files containing malware for Windows can not infect Linux because they are different operating systems. However there are exceptions to just about everything, and if an executable file is written in a programming language that can be used directly (not requiring any programming "massaging"), by different operating systems--such as Java, there is a chance it could infect both systems. There are few other such languages, but Java is the one most commonly used by malware. Even then, it is not very common.

Regardless, you should remove any malware that you happen to find from any system.

Regards,

Thanks Bob I understand.