[ubuntu-uk] Virus/Firewall protection.....

[Alan Bell]

John Matthews wrote:
> I wonder if somebody can hep. I dont have any firewall or virus 
> protection on my ubuntu partitions. I am a little bit concerned about 
> this. I did install one Called Firestarter, which messed up everything, 
> and I had to uninstall it. I just couldnt get around the firewall. I 
> know it was my fault, as I just dont understand the way the firewall 
> works. I also have something called Firewall Builder installed, I dont 
> understand that either, so I'm a bit stumped.
>
> I run my Ubuntu using the admin log in, should I run it via a separate 
> long in that doesnt have admin privileges? Which is the easiest 
> protection system that a thicko like can understand and not break 
> anything with.
>
> Thanks
>
> John.
>
>   
Hi John,
do you mean you log in as "john" and you can put your password in again 
if you want to install stuff? If so that is normal and secure, you are a 
user with sudo rights. If you are logging on as the user called root, 
then you have a problem.

In the IRC channel #ubuntu-uk there is a bot that tells us things, here 
is what it has to say about firewalls and viruses

12:22 < AlanBell> !firewall
12:22 < ubot4> Ubuntu, like any other linux  distribution, has firewall 
capabilities built-in. The firewall is managed using the 'ufw' command (see
               
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Uncomplicated_Firewall_ufw), or 
'iptables' (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/IptablesHowTo). GUI
               applications such as Firestarter/Gufw (Gnome) or Guarddog 
(KDE) also exist
12:22 < AlanBell> !virus
12:22 < ubot4> A/V software is available, however read this to 
understand why Linux does not have a virus problem: 
http://librenix.com/?inode=21


out of the box Ubuntu is secure and you don't need to worry about 
hardening like you do with the dominant proprietary operating system. Do 
keep up with the updates though.

Alan.