Comment 8 for bug 30582

A "zero-open-port" policy is generally a good thing, but Avahi/MDNS services are beginning to be *expected* by users. I fully expected Avahi to be on by default in Edgy for workstation installations.

Case in point - I impressed a couple of Mac users by showing them that my Ubuntu installation's Rhythmbox could see and play their iTunes shared music.

One of them got excited and installed Ubuntu on a Windows PC he had at home. Avahi was disabled by default; he couldn't figure out why or how to enable it; he quit in disgust, saying "Ubuntu is just not polished enough".

I understand the need for security. Still, burying an 'enable autodiscovery' setting in the Networking capplet is not an intuitive solution for a user that expects things to "just work". Even if they find the setting, how are they supposed to know that turning it on will make their friend's iTunes music available, etc. etc.?

Since we don't want to open ports the user has not explicitly opened, the sensible thing to do would seem to be dedicating a 'page' in the LiveCD graphical installer wizard to explaining MDNS's risks and benefits, and allowing the user to enable or disable it for their new installation.

Once Ubuntu is installed, it's really too late.