[SATLUG] Distro for Firewall / Gateway Server

[Brad Knowles]

Alan Lesmerises wrote:

> If I wanted to setup a server to act as a dedicated firewall / gateway 
> server, and to possibly run some home automation type stuff (think X-10 
> appliances or similar), would there be any particular distro that would 
> be better suited for that?  In other words, do any distros come already 
> pre-packaged with the kinds apps that would support that sort of thing 
> right out of the box?

For one thing, if I'm running a firewall/gateway on a box, I don't want 
anything else running on that box.  I'll run my home automation type stuff 
on a separate box inside the firewall.

On that firewall/gateway box, I'd probably run something like pfSense or 
m0n0wall, but then those are based on FreeBSD or OpenBSD, and not Linux. 
And I'd probably make the firewall/gateway box a Soekris net4501 or similar 
type of single-board-computer, that is not dependent on rotating media and 
stores it's OS and configuration files on read-only flash.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>