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The Linux distillery Ubuntu Linux 8: Is the heron hardier?
The Linux distillery Ubuntu Linux 8: Is the heron hardier? | Ubuntu Linux 8: Is the heron hardier? |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Monday, 31 March 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 3 Coming up in Hardy Heron is ufw – the Uncomplicated Firewall. This runs from the command line but takes no effort to get started; you can switch it on and make it persistent across reboots with nary more than sudo ufw enable.Featured Whitepaper
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You can read more about ufw on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFirewall. This page indicates one of the major driving forces behind ufw is not purely a simplified interface but also to provide an integrated firewall in the base Ubuntu installation – one which is savvy about network products that may be installed at any later time. Presently, the user needs to manually configure iptables or any other system if they later wish to expose Apache or an SMTP mail server or anything else to the outside network. Being integrated into the base operating system itself, ufw will allow services to be easily enabled when new packages are added, or the reverse when packages are removed. Additionally, ufw can dump a list of its rules along with the ports that it has open in a friendly format showing the application using them not just the port number. One other new feature is not really a feature per se, but a process improvement by the Ubuntu team. Sometimes content provided in their forums is plain incorrect or out of date, possibly having been specific to an older release. Ubuntu will be rolling out forum content certification whereby their new forum team will check the validity of instructions given, approve or reject postings, and handle promote the information in the forums and on the wiki site and elsewhere. They will also commit to re-checking posts after new releases to ensure content retains currency and accuracy. This will help the Ubuntu experience remain a pleasant one with users assured the help they receive from official sources is genuinely going to be of assistance. For those who want to tie into Windows computers in their home or workplace, Samba is now integrated in a far simpler way. Previously, Samba had to be manually installed and then configured from the command line. With the new simple Samba integration Ubuntu will prompt you to install Samba itself when you call up the Shared Folders applet. A checkbox will share all home directories with one click That’s potentially dangerous depending on the security you desire and the visibility of your computer to outsiders but it does make things dead simple for a home environment where security inside the network is not such an issue. The latest word is this roadmap intention is possibly deferred at the moment, but if it can make it into Hardy Heron I know it will solve some of the user frustrations I certainly heard about. Let’s see what makes the final cut, but so far all signs are good that Ubuntu 8.04 will be a blockbuster release. |
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