Setting up IP Tables rules

I'm new to linux and recently installed Linux Mint on my computer. On Windows 7, I have a very good firewall that I trust and use on all my computers. As far as I know, for linux, the firewall is built into the system and we only have to set up these "ip tables" rules? What kind of rules should I implement? The more secure the system the better. I am using LInux as a bare-bones system for now.



Thanks!

 

bodhizazen.net/Tutorials/iptables

This is a very good guide.

 

If you want to learn it, the Bodhi guide is great and there are a lot of blogs and Nixcraft articles on Iptables.

But as a regular user you really don't need to mess with iptables, especially if you're behind a router. As a new user there are definitely better things to focus learning power on, like AppArmor and disabling unneeded services, IMO.

Code:

sudo ufw enable

That is all you need to switch on the Linux firewall if you're not running servers. It blocks all incoming and allows all outgoing. That's the same as default Windows FW. If you want to go further, gufw is the graphical controller for ufw (and ufw is just a simplified frontend for iptables) and you can very easily tailor ufw to the ports, IP's and protocols you want.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gufw

There's been good discussion on here about the differences on Linux vs Windows 'firewalls' due to how the OS's use permissions and access control.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=333138&page=2&highlight=linux firewall

Basically, you'll be hard pressed to set up a Comodo FW-like solution in Linux, which I'm assuming you came from in Windows or something similar. Even iptables does not block application binaries. You can use ufw application rules to make specific allow/disallow rules for programs but I personally don't think the result is worth the effort.

 

Use a graphical firewall GUI frontend - in Ubuntu, GUFW is the best and its recommended to leave it on the default settings unless you have special requirements. All you have to do is turn on the firewall and its will provide active protection!