Please enable firewall by default

Development Discussion
#1

I’ve been an Ubuntu user for 3 or 4 years. Liked 10.x, loved 11.x, hated 12.x, love 14.x and a few of its variant flavors like Ubuntu Mate and Linux Mint-Mate.

When I install Ubuntu and any of it’s variant flavors, I always enable the firewall by typing this in the terminal “sudo ufw enable”.

I think the firewall should be enabled by default so users don’t have to do anything with it. That way beginners would be protected.

As a beginner, I used Ubuntu 10.x & 11.x for years without the firewall enabled because I didn’t know about it. As an intermediate user I finally realized late in my use of 11.x that I needed to enable the firewall.

So this is really about protecting beginners, and it’d be so easy for developers to implement.

#2

Hi
I’m beginner in Ubuntu and I’ve researched a little bit about firewall in Ubuntu in the official german language Ubuntu-Forum. So, what I learned about the firewall is, that it is not absolute necessary for a privat, home linux-user. Obviously it is particularly a Windows thing and even there not realy a protection - it has also probaply a psychological effect. But IMHO I think, this is the reason, because the firewall is not enabled by default. Perhaps I’m wrong and you could give an instructions how to configurate it. Because I tested the firewal a few month ago with the result, that wifi wasn’t worked any more.

#3

If I remember right, turning it on causes problems for some people and that is why they do not do it as a default. And, it does not appear in the menu until you load the GUI – gufw – and that would help a lot.

#4

Hi! Gufw developer here |o/
An Ubuntu desktop does not need a firewall enabled by default, since by default Ubuntu does not open ports that can introduce security issues.
Best regards!

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#5

I share the same point you have. I was always worried with things like firewalls, antiviruses and antimalwares when using Windows. Sometimes, I don’t know even what antivirus to choose among the wide variety of choices we have in Windows. From the moment I switched to linux - right now I’m using ubuntu mate- I have never had such a terrible security problems that I exprerienced with Windows. I’m very pleased indeed with what I can get from the linux open source world especialy with Ubuntu Mate distro.

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