this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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You've got it backwards. A firewall blocks everything, then you open up the ports you want to use. A standard config would allow everything going out, and block everything coming in (unless you initiated that connection, then it is allowed).
So the question you should be asking, is what services do you think you're going to be running on your desktop that you plan to allow anyone on the internet to get to?
Please stop giving bad advise. The local firewall is not the same as the public firewall and nat on the router. Your comment is incredibly misleading. You can have no Firewall and the services will not be available publicly
I fail to see why this is bad advice. Sure you could just disable the firewall on your computer on a local network. But that's under the assumption that you can trust everything on your local network. What if it's a laptop? Do you also trust any public networks you may connect to on the go? Having firewall both on the router and on your computer provides an additional layer of security, and I think that's good advice in general. You can for example set it up to only allow incoming connections when connected to your home network for example.
There is a difference between good practice and fear mongering. You aren't going to lose it all because you didn't turn on the Firewall.
To be fair I haven't configured a firewall either on my laptop. But that's out of lazyness, not out of good practice. Good practice would be to have a firewall enabled. Just because something is unlikely to happen statistically doesn't mean it's bad practice to take steps to protect against it.