[TriLUG] Debian any good?

[Jon Carnes]

On Sun, 2004-02-01 at 11:57, Peter Long wrote:
> I would like to thank everyone for their advice. I have considered all 
> your advice and I have decided to go with Debian Stable and to limit the 
> functionality of the machine to firewall/gateway, mail-server and maybe 
> web-server. Since it is only a PII 350Mhz I think that is enough work 
> for it. SpamAssassin pegs the poor processor. :)
> 
> I have the makings of another machine with a AMD Athlon 1.1Mhz processor 
> that I will turn into a desktop that will sit behind the firewall. I am 
> not sure what disto will end-up on that machine. For now I just need to 
> find some reliable PC133 RAM for the motherboard.
> 
> Daniel: I went to http://people.debian.org/~blade/ and I am concerned 
> with the reason behind the pass phrase on the zip file! Why would I want 
> to install possibly compromised software on a machine that is supposed 
> to be my highly secure firewall? I think I will stick with the regular 
> iso's. I already have half of them anyway.
> 
> Thanks again for all the advice.
> 
> --
> Peter Long
> 
You probably have your heart set on Debian by now, but if you really
want to try something different that is extremely different, but makes a
wonderful server (and is very secure), then try out OpenBSD.

The install is easier than Debian, but not as easy as RH.  Still it
makes for a very secure server with some amazing built-in functionality.
The firewall (pf) is well documented and very powerful. IP Sec runs
natively and also easy to implement for secure communications.
  
  http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Overview

Good Luck - Jon Carnes