Ubuntu firewall?

Still talking about Ubuntu, since I forgot one aspect I found puzzling - the lack of a firewall frontend in the base install. Could it be because there were no internet facing services installed on my box? OK, but what if I want to install ssh? Or the ssh server, in order to be able to log into my desktop from my laptop from work?

Hm. I googled a bit and found Ubuntu firewall, which seemed to do the job (although I should maybe run one of the firewall tests available online just to check). It seems OK, but it does funny things in the boot process - the text "starting ubuntu firewall" pops up many times during boot. I was using shorewall on Mandrake, and I might get back to it, since I know how to use it. However, Ubuntu firewall seems to be able to work "out of the box" better than shorewall, as far as I can tell.

Any recommendations?