Hardware firewall, software firewall

Who uses both firewalls on Linux? Nowadays, it is often the case that our devices are behind a rooter on a local network. In most cases, rooters have a firewall. What do you think about the need to have a firewall running on your computer?

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It is non-important if several things are true:

  • You are careful with what you do online and run a minimal application set
  • You live alone and have complete control of all the computers in your local network
  • You have no iot/smart devices in your network
  • You never have guests with phones, computer or smart devices
  • You don’t have a wireless network

For everyone else, it is quite important. Much more important now than it was 5-10 years ago.

The firewall at the edge of the network protects you against attacks from outside your network. The firewall on your PC protects you from attacks on the inside of your network. These days both are big threats. Most of us have devices inside our network that make calls to the outside of our network that can be compromised. Thermostats, health tracking wearables, TVs, streaming devices, smart washers/dryers, exercise equipment, virtually everything amazon/google/facebook makes, etc, etc, etc.

Security is a more real risk today than it ever has been in the past. People who are still holding on to old security paradigms may already be compromised somewhere.

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The claim that Linux is a more secure system than Windows has also been refuted. The importance of the human factor has increased.

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As @dalto implied, we nowadays have many more devices on the local network. It is important to keep all these devices updated, but some of the devices are not easy to keep updated, or have no updating at all.

One specially important thing: the router has an admin password that should be changed from the factory default.

Fortunately most Linux users are aware of this, but the problem is the unaware people.

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Oh dear, I’m suddenly feeling very old!

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I think everyone is getting younger these days, especially if they are actively involved in the community while using Linux. :slight_smile:

You have a great point there! Linux community in general is typically much more technologically aware than other communities, e.g. Windows and MacOS users. That can make us also feel younger… :wink:

(Note: if someone is offended by this, I sincerely apologize. Not meaning to offend anyone.)

Windows is usually not a choice, so no surprise there… and for the Mac people, they have genius bars to be tech aware FOR them :grin:

(The EndeavourOS forum disavows all knowledge of the opinions expressed by this user)

Keep smiling!

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Well, users of closed source software may not be as knowledgeable as the free software community. When a problem arises, solutions to fix it immediately begin to spread on the Internet. With closed software, you often have to wait a long time to fix a bug. Members of the open source software community are therefore much more creative and younger.

I don’t think age has anything to do with it, I think the Open source community is used to get under the hood o their hardware, so they are more adjustive when they have to change the code.