[Lincs] noob lurking around the edges

[Pete Hunt]

Peter Cooper wrote:
  For beginners, I couldn't really recommend anything, I believe most
> consumer-friendly distros come with their own easy-to-use firewall, I'm 
> sure Fedora does, and I think SuSE does too. 

This is intended for Janet really....

in case your distro doesn't have a simple firewall interface:

Firestarter is GUI (Gnome) based, simple and user friendly 
http://firestarter.sourceforge.net/

I've heard good things about Firewall Builder, but never got round to 
using it, it's also GUI based.
http://www.fwbuilder.org/.
They have packages for major distros (source available for the rest, 
obviously).

Personally, I like Shorewall - it's pretty simple but requires a bit of 
text editing.
http://shorewall.sourceforge.net/

> Can't recommend any virus software for UNIX as I've never encoutered any 
> viruses or bothered checking.

I tend to run f-prot on my fileserver and the dual-boot box as a "second 
opinion" for the windows-based files.
It's free for home use, http://www.f-prot.com/products/home_use/linux/

or if you don't fancy filling in the registration form, you can go to:
ftp://ftp.f-prot.com/pub/linux/

Pete