UFW or Uncomplicated Firewall, is a text based firewall that works with iptables. UFW is designed to be an easier way to manage a firewall from the command line. Whether this is easier than learning iptables or not, you can decide. But UFW comes partially set up when you install Ubuntu. Now, it is not activated by default so you have no protection but some basic settings that are in place when you do start up UFW.