[Discuss] Trying to connect to internet in Debian

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Rich Pieri)]

On Fri, 16 Jan 2026 17:07:10 -0500
"Randall Rose" <rrose at pobox.com> wrote:

> Hi Rich,
> 
> Thanks, you make several good points.  
> 
> Most of my criticism of Debian still stands. The installer that is
> run from the Debian iso does allow installing some features that will
> listen to network traffic (though you can uncheck those options).

So what? Debian lets you do a lot of things, but it NEVER holds your
hand. If you choose to install something, the responsibility to get it
right is yours.

For what it's worth, I manage on the order of 3000 Linux machines,
mostly RHEL and Ubuntu. First thing I do on every one is stop and
disable the firewall service. These machines absolutely can connect to
public Internet services. NONE have ever been compromised under my
watch 

> I want to make sure my point about ufw and iptables is clear.  I
> definitely did not say I was mixing ufw and iptables in the sense of
> running iptables commands on the same machine that runs ufw.  I hope