Ed Wilts wrote: >On Thu, Jul 11, 2002 at 10:28:32AM -0100, Josep M. wrote: > > >>Hello. >> >>I´m thinking in put a firewall for protect my home computers,and buy a cheaper >computer >>and do firewall using rh73 and iptables,no X environement,just basic os for a >firewall. >> >>The speed of my ADSL is 256 Kb/s ,will be enough with a Pentium-120 with 48 RAM? >> >> > >I've actually been quite happy using a low-cost Linksys box instead of a >Linux system. I used to use a Linux system, but that's another system >you need to keep up to date with new releases, replace the occasional >failed hard drive (since you'll probably use an old drive in it) and put >up with the noise and power requirements. Several people at work (all >IT people) came to the same conclusions. > >You may want to check out the Linux Router Project if you continue down >the P120/48 route. > > .../Ed > > As long as you are only doing rudimentary firewalling, that may be true. However, you'll never get the capability or flexibility from a low-cost Linksys that you will get from Linux. I use my Linux box to firewall, route and VPN my home network to my brother-in-law's house so that we can share files without being exposed to the world. I had a P66 with 48MB of RAM perform that function for many years, and I had begun taking advantage of other features of Linux that made my home network easier -- such as SAMBA and storing my e-mail on Linux and using an IMAP server so that my email was available on any machine in my home network. I finally upgraded to a new system simply because the old mother board and case wouldn't allow me to add a tape drive and additional hard drive so I could do real backups and Software RAID to safeguard my important data.
I guess that my point is that if you go the route of the Linksys box, you will have a simple firewall/router. If you find maintaining computers a hassle and you don't have any special needs (like my VPN), then this will be the easiest solution. However, if you enjoy being in complete control of the environment with an incredible amount of tools and resources (such as this list) to help you through, you might find that you can take advantage of other things that a Linux machine can do for you in addition to simple firewall. By the way, a previous message suggested that you may have to do a text install. I'm not sure what the comment was based on as I have done graphical installs on a great number of machines, without regard to whether or not I was installing X. My suggestion is, if you have the disk space for it, go ahead and install X, but don't run the machine in run level 5. Your machine won't take up the resources (I.E. main memory) to support the X server, but you will be able to run remote commands and display them to another computer running an X server (i.e. Windows running Cygwin/XFree86). That is what I do and I have the Linux machine in the basement (where the noise and heat don't bother me) and I display a KDE environment on my PC whenever I want to work on it in a graphical mode. Stephen _______________________________________________ Redhat-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
