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LinuxPlanet: DistributionWatch Review: SmoothWall Linux 0.9.8

“The need for security in an increasingly insecure world is
growing ever greater. Linux, often touted as one of the more secure
platforms, still has its security flaws. SmoothWall Linux is a
solution that has systematically removed many of these flaws by
shipping a solid, cohesive distribution that has only one thing on
its list of things to do: protect your network.”

“When I first looked at SmoothWall 0.9.4 last September, I
explained that SmoothWall Linux is a creation of Richard Morrell
and Lawrence Manning, two British programmers who wanted to “extend
Linux via a device that they can build that isn’t a cobbled
together solution but a fully fledged device with management
facilities, into the houses with Mac and Windows clients,”
according to Morrell. Neither the mission or the functionality of
SmoothWall has been changed with today’s release of SmoothWall
0.9.8.”

“One thing that has not changed and should clearly stated that
SmoothWall is not meant to be shared with other partitions. If you
install SmoothWall, you should do it on a machine that can act
solely as a firewall, because all of your other partitions will be
blown away. This is spelled out in the Installation Guide available
on SourceForge, but it cannot be stressed enough if you decide to
use this for firewalling your network. SmoothWall’s development
team has indicated that you can install this on a 486 machine and
still get effective performance.”

Complete
Story

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