Interactive Firewall

[Jon]

How about an interactive wirewall Like this?

http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/InteractiveFirewall

Or maybe have firestarter installled by default? What are your thoughts? I know
you dont really need a firewall using Linux, but I think it will give piece of
mind to some people, personally I think it would be pretty neat. Some of the
l337 users probably wouldnt want it though.

From forum on this topic:

[QUOTE=stoffe]You most certainly need a firewall running Linux too, if you have
services running that listen on ports. Linux programs are by no means immune to
threats, and there's automated worms looking for unpatched SSH vulnerabilities
on *nix systems for instance.

Ubuntus rationale for not shipping with a firewall is that it ships with no
services running on any ports, which is fine as long as it stays that way. It is
assumed that any user starting such a service should also know to firewall it
properly if it's needed.

This, IMO is not such a good assumption. So I'm really all for shipping with a
firewall. The problem with firewalls is however that they usually make things
stop working, and in ways that the user don't understand. There's plenty of good
firewalls on windows that work around this by asking interactive questions when
something happens, and giving good guesses at actions to take. Something like
that is what is needed, which I suppose is what the Madriva thingy is?

A smart and interactive firewall, with good defaults and smart rules (FTP,
routing, SMB, IM file transfers...) would be very good! Also, with internet
connection sharing: I stopped using Firestarter because that part never worked,
and instead it interfered with my manual sharing settings...[/QUOTE]

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug. ("gnome-desktop" is a library and the "about GNOME" dialog)

Bugzilla is not the right place to discuss feature requests like that, you
probably want to use a list for that. Anyway the firewall option has already
been discussed and we have a specification about it on the wiki:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Firewalls. Feel free to comment on it or to create a new
specification on launchpad about it: https://launchpad.net/specs

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas (mantas)]

Every universal Desktop Linux distribution needs modern, simple and user-frienly Firewall/Routing/Port forwarding solution (Internet connection sharing) for the desktop.
For the GNOME desktop the best solution is the Firestarter - look at screenshots:
http://www.fs-security.com/screenshots.php

Key Firestarter Features

    * Open Source software, available free of charge
    * Easy to use graphical interface
    * Suitable for use on desktops, servers and gateways
    * Enables Internet connection sharing
    * Allows you to define both inbound and outbound access policy
    * Option to whitelist or blacklist traffic
    * Sets up DHCP for a local network
    * Real time firewall events view
    * View active network connections, including any traffic routed through the firewall
    * Advanced Linux kernel tuning features

More features...

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

Ubuntu has ufw now (uncomplicated firewall), GUI for it (gufw) can be installed separately.