this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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Hi. I wanted to know if it's needed to install a firewall on a linux desktop/laptop. Why yes or why no?

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[–] bushvin 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you need a lock on the door of your place?

No, but it’s a damn good idea to protect whatever is in it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's a bad comparison. Without a lock you can just open the door from the outside.

[–] bushvin 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] LufyCZ 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not.

If you have a house, it has a door which you can use to access everything inside.

If you have a linux install with no services running on it, it has no doors, and thus doesn't need any door locks. And if it does have services running on there (which run publicly), it now has doors, sure, but getting one of those doors open doesn't guarantee access to the whole house - usually it's gonna be an empty room

[–] Jagger2097 -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Linux with no services? That's not a usable system for anyone who would ask "do I need a firewall"

Systemd is a service that runs logind. What are you doing without them?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think by services they mean self-hosted, web-based services, or things like sshd - services which work by actively serving connections on a particular port or ports.

[–] vector_zero 3 points 1 year ago

And even then, a properly configured SSHD instance wouldn't really benefit from a firewall, unless you wanted to block all countries besides your own or something.