Best firewall gateway version of Linux ?

[Richard Cottrill]

The Smoothwall people are 'difficult' at best. The founders both have
'interesting' conversational styles. Richard Morrell is the most vocal and
visible; described by one person as 'the human pit-bull'. He is, in general,
abusive, rude, arrogant, and the very model of a difficult nerd.

I have it from the horse's mouth that Smoothwall GPL is being deliberately
being knobbled to push sales of the for-profit offerings from Smoothwall
Ltd. The Smoothwall people don't behave as any other GPL project; this is a
business. They don't accept code; they're not (as a group) very open; and
they're generally a bit of a pain to deal with.

As people they're probably not a complete write-off but they're a PITA if
you want to talk about Smoothwall, GPL, etc.

My biggest fear is that IPCop is attempting to move wholesale away from
Smoothwall; and that they wont make it. Have a look at their TODO list for
version 2.

Richard

> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-admin at lists.samba.org [mailto:linux-admin at lists.samba.org]On
> Behalf Of Simon Haddon
> Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2002 12:02 PM
> To: linux at samba.org
> Subject: Re: Best firewall gateway version of Linux ?
>
>
> I've just visited the Smoothwall web site and I could not believe the
> similarities that IPCop has with it.  I know IPCop was based on
> Smoothwall but the only difference that I could really tell was in the
> graphics used in the web interface.
>
> Does anyone know why IPCop split from Smoothwall?
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>
> On 12/02/02, 10:41:54 PM, Simon Haddon <simon at sibern.com.au> wrote
> regarding Re: Best firewall gateway version of Linux ?:
>
>
> > >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Original Message <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
>
> > On 12/02/02, 5:30:29 PM, Martijn van Oosterhout
> <kleptog at svana.org> wrote
> > regarding Re: Best firewall gateway version of Linux ?:
>
>
> > > On Tue, Feb 12, 2002 at 01:24:03PM +1100, Ian Matters wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >Could someone with experience of Gibraltar/Smoothwall
> > > > >  say what the CD activity is like?
> > > > >Does it let the CD spin down and sit once it has booted?
> > > > >
> > > > >That would require a decent complement of ram, say 64 Meg
> or 128 Meg?
> > > > I run Smoothwall 0.99 on my small network.  The machine is
> an old '486
> > with
> > > > about 500MB of HDD and 32MB of RAM and is quite adequate for the
> > > > job.  Smoothwall does require a hard drive.
>
> > > Wow! Powerful machine! I've got a 486SX/33 with 200MB HDD and 16MB RAM
> > > running a very bare debian install.
>
> > Hmmmm.  So I guess what you saying is my Pentuim 166 with 32 Megs and a
> > 1.2Gig disk is just too much.  I do run IPSec and I do use the
> extra disk
> > space for caching content.  IPCop just doesn't work it hard enough.  The
> > machine doesn't have a CD either so I had to do the mount ISO image
> > thingy.
>
>
> > > I did have to put the HDD in another machine to install because 16MB
> > would
> > > have taken too long :).
> > > --
> > > Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at svana.org>
> > > http://svana.org/kleptog/
> > > > Terrorists can only take my life. Only my government can
> take my freedom.
>