whenever I use an unknown net work (be at public, hotel, coffee, shop, McDonald’s, etc.), I always use a firewall on the laptop without exception. I also use a VPN. No sense giving anybody any ammunition to use against you later. There’s a reason why you should not trust public networks. You don’t know who else is hanging out on them. And even though your machine is inherently secure, there really is no such thing as too much security.

– Eric
From the central offices of the Technomage guild, security applications department. 

Sent from my iPhone

On May 10, 2023, at 18:22, AZ Pete via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:

 Hi All,

I am finally making the full transition from Windows to Linux. I have currently replaced my Windows laptops with Linux. So far, all my applications and dev tools work great; I am able to do everything on Linux that I am able to on Windows. I have to go on a trip next week and will be bringing my laptops along. When traveling I generally avoid connecting to unknown networks (i.e. hotels, coffee shops, etc), however there are times when I must. When running Windows I always run a firewall (Windows Firewall + Defender). But I've been reading mixed results on whether I should run a firewall on Linux. Half the articles say it's not needed and the other half say I should. I understand that the kernel has no open ports by default. I did verify this by connecting my laptop (via Wifi) to my mobile phone hotspot so that it was not behind any router or firewall. I went to Steve Gibson's Shield's Up site and without the running the Linux firewall, Shield's up showed all ports in "stealth" mode.

This laptop isn't running any server-type software requiring open ports. It is used for browsing, email and VPN connections to my work environments. Oh, and most importantly, Steam games. :)
This is a Dell Latitude running Kubuntu 22.04.

So, I'm asking the PLUG brain-trust, do I need to run a firewall on Linux when connecting to public networks (such as a hotel WiFi)?

Any thoughts are appreciated.
Peter

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