Information on Ubuntu

I have seen many forums saying that Ubuntu is virus free and it has no need for any firewall. Also it says that linux based distros do not need antivirus as there are only 40 virus around the world for linux. Out of those 40 virus only 3 are criitical and rest were developed in labs for testing.I have a original CD of Ubuntu and hence I installed it. It seems to work fine with all repositories updated. But is Ubuntu safe?

Ubuntu is a linux distribution, it is as safe as any other linux distribution. Saying linux distro's are linux free is incorrect, but they are certainly practcally virus free. Keeping a anti virus software is useless for a linux home user, only makes sense for mail servers, as they have to detect windows virii in the mail they process.

A firewall is a whole different matter. While not as essential as a good and strong password, a firewall can improve network security substantially on any operating system. Many distributions already ship with a basic firewall ruleset for iptables, the linux kernel firewall, but you can use a generator like Firestarter for creating custom rules. Or you can use my simple ruleset if you need it 🙂