GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 761256
GNOME Control Center should allow you to configure iptables
Last modified: 2016-02-05 15:35:10 UTC
Currently if one wants to configure iptables they either have to do it manually or install gufw or firewalld and then the GUI for firewalld if they want a nice user-friendly environment for this sort of configuration, however from here (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-gnome/+bug/1523696) I understand that there is a plan to possibly install firewalld with its GUI in the future, however I also understand that firewalld's GUI doesn't hardly offer as many options as firewalld does when it is used from command-line. So I think that it would be really good if (because I believe that every OS should have some at least basic security tools built-in or pre-installed which are reasonably easy to use without having to install more applications - for instance Ubuntu MATE has gufw installed by default which I think is a step in the right direction) there was a built-in way in the GNOME Control Center which would allow you to configure iptables, whether that's through the use of firewalld or something else.
This isn't something we're considering. You can take a look here as to the rationale behind not using a restrictive firewall by default: http://www.hadess.net/2014/06/firewalls-and-per-network-sharing.html The end goal being that apps request network access through xdg-app's permission system. (setting up firewalls can never be something "user-friendly", it's about intent for the user, whether to share something from the local machine or not)
Ok, but the firewall could be turned off by default, because every system should allow you some built-in firewall configuration, Windows does, Mac does, Ubuntu MATE does, and there are many others, so I think that even if not enabled by default, some sort of configuration GUI should be installed by default or built-in.