Comment Re:Advantages? (Score 1) 146
And if your use case includes one of those legitimate reasons, then it's your responsibility to know enough about security to configure the firewall. It is fundamentally impossible for there to be a safe alternative to this!
Do you really expect the average user to know about IPs, ports, TCP/UDP etc.? That's not very realistic. I don't agree that a safe alternative is impossible - there's no magic power that packets have to hack a computer. Any failings are due to poorly written software.
If an application doesn't need to listen for connections, it shouldn't open a port. A firewall won't make any difference here.
If an application does need to listen for connections the firewall will need to let them through. Again, the firewall doesn't help - at least not at the level of sophistication you'd see in a home router's firewall.