Firewall configuration in Ubuntu is about to get a lot easier thanks to a new project providing a graphical front end to Ubuntu’s default firewall UFW and thus making security settings simple for everyday users. 

Ubuntu’s default firewall* UFW (uncomplicated firewall) is accessible via the terminal and some commands but, for users like myself, that’s all a bit daunting. UFW Frontends is the perfect solution to this by being both graphical and easy to use.

Wait – isn’t there already a GUI available?

Yes. Gufw. It’s a relativly simple interface for UFW but lacks many of the features that UFW-Frontends affords. Darwin noted this in his e-mail to us, pointing to his project page which lists the reasons why he chose to develop a frontend from scratch.
Download
Standalone .deb and source tarbells are available to download on the project page @
code.google.com/p/ufw-frontends

Alternatively UFW Frontends can be installed and maintained from Darwin’s PPA: –

  • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:baudm/ppa
  • sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ufw-frontends

Launch from System > Administration > Firewall

*Technically ufw is simply a program that manipulates iptables – the actual firewall included in the Linux kernel – but for simplicities sake, and the fact UFW is what this programme is a front-end to, consider UFW the firewall. 

Article originally appeared on omgubuntu.co.uk