Lately I've been having some trouble with Minecraft LAN games. Not with hosting them or even with joining them exactly, but with seeing them at all. Here's the situation:

* I am not able to see Minecraft LAN games on my multiplayer screen automatically
* I can see them if I add them as I would a server on the internet
* I can join them if I add them, or if I connect to them directly

Basically, I can join games but not find them automatically. It just says "Scanning for games on your local network..." indefinitely. My current theory is that while joining games obviously doesn't require opened ports *discovering them* might - is this the case? 

As far as I know I can't permit specific applications through my firewall (I'm on Linux, and not that I'd care to just give a blanket permit to Java in any case) so I can't test this without having some idea of what ports would be required. It's also possible it's another issue pertinent to Linux or something else altogether, though.

This isn't a huge deal as I can just ask what port the server is being hosted on, but it's been bugging me. Oh, and in case anyone comes across this question with a similar problem, I'm just going to reiterate:

**You can join the game by connecting to it directly, just ask for the port. The person hosting will receive a message with it when they open the game. Then you can directly connect to it at (probably) 192.168.#.###:####.**

UPDATE: Hosting on LAN works fine, I just can't see the games others host. Additionally, I should clarify I actually mean opening ports on my local firewall, I said port forwarding but that was not actually what I meant.

For a further clarification, this isn't isolated to one person - I've tried with both my brothers, neither of whom is using any special security software that I know of. And they can see each others'.