[Malvern] Is there life in BT Broadband?

[Guy Inchbald]

Chris Eilbeck <chris at yordas.demon.co.uk> writes
>What's everyone up to?  It's gone suspiciously quite on here.  Is anyone
>hacking anything interesting or playing with any good software?

I've been playing with a few distros/toys to come up with my ideal system.
The arrival of BT "Broadband" 3 miles from Upton, subject to an engineer's
visit, makes this a timely moment to ask for advice:

I'll need to sign up with BT Broadband, otherwise the engineer is unlikely to
call for free. I'd like to have a firewall between my home network (mostly
Windows - one will be used extensively for online gaming) and the "always on
= always vulnerable" broadband. IMHO a firewall on a Windows PC is a
contradiction in terms. Is it better to use a modem with inbuilt firewall
(means buying one), or to use my planned Linux machine as a gateway/firewall
for the others (so I can use the freebie BT modem which apparently has 3rd
party Linux support)?

How techy is it to set up and maintain a gateway and a firewall?
Presumably, there are some games to play with IP addressing between the
"intranet" and the wide world.

Are there any issues over online gaming which need thinking through?

Now to Linux. My ideal system:
  Pure freedom for all main tools (GPL or better, even for commercial use).
  Installer able to cope with most hardware and X GUI without deeply techy 
  scripting.
  GNOME only (no KDE). Don't know why, but GNOME apps tend to feel nicer.
  Easy update / uninstall.

Debian looks close, but I am unsure whether even the latest 1.0 Installer
will be easy enough for setting up X, or how Debian manages uninstalling.

Do any Debain-based distros come closer?

Has anybody got a copy of Debian with the 1.0 installer they would be willing
to burn to CD, for a small compensation?

Cheers,
Guy