hi all..i am starting from scratch on the linux thing..onething i have been told is that over here i may be able to set a box up to act as a frirewall and have 4 or 5 other puters benind it on a local network..the box i have is a 486dx66 with a 450 meg hd...i didnt think it would possible to do anything with something so small but was told to come here and ask, so here i am...i know absolutely nothing about linux but can learn...if anyone can tell me if i am barking up the wrong tree with this box then i can look for something else before i start

thanks for the time people, i appreciate it

I use a p60 with 32M ram and 800M HD running slackware for a firewall and it works good. The machine is always idle, so I don't see why a 486 couldn't do the job. The 400M of disk space may be a tight fit. I have a minimal slack install and I have about 450 megs used. Remember that you wil need space for the logs. I'm sure you can get a smaller linux to fit on the drive. You can look into the firewall distros.

Yes, a 486 is fine for a firewall. Check out: http://ipcop.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin.../IPCop/WebHome