[Nottingham] complete beginner

[Robert Postill]

Terry,
If you have a distribution like Red Hat, SuSE or Mandrake you should be 
able to find a tool to set up the firewall for you.  That'll save you 
the effort of learning how to configure iptables (the firewall portion 
of the kernel).  If not there are packages out there that will ease some 
of the pain (check http://freshmeat.net or http://www.sourceforge.net if 
you want to find a tool) but generally they're aimed at the intermediate.

Hope that helps.
Robert.

Terry Devlin wrote:

> To the experts
> I'm new to Linux and have it safely installed on my system for word 
> processing etc. My problem is using it for the internet. I would love 
> to use it so I can escape the blue wall of death but I struugle with 
> having a firewall installed. On windows I just install Zone Alarm but 
> configuring a firewall on Linux seems to involve having a separate 
> machine or copying a whole load of script into a programme. Am I 
> missing out on something? Can anyone recommend a good linux for idiots 
> book?
>