Long time user of Mint myself, certainly still running AV on it but of course there is less viruses available and due to the different architecture of the operating system - linux (unix based) rather than microsoft it means that none of the virus programs complied for microsoft will work on linux. That isn't to say that linux isn't at risk, but if you keep things up to date and follow standard practices you should be okay.
Quote by PYKW99It may be harder but still possible😊