I am new to the different distributions available for linux and am looking for a distro that has an easy to setup router/firewall built-in. I have tried smoothwall and it seems very capable but for PPOE it is not what I am looking for as far as configurability is concerned and compatiblity. It seems as most of the ones I have found especially the ones with the web admin interfaces are not available without paying hefty prices. Thanks for anyones info.

SmoothWall2 if you don't need anything else from your box.

Install webmin then.

I did use SmoothWall version 2.0beta but I found an issue with it connecting my ISP via PPOE. I couldn't get the box to login and honestly read every bit of documentation I could find on their site and it was in my opinion very very vague in describing any of the features. It was almost as if they wrote the documentation as a starter to fill in later with content. I mean you could find the option like "Keep connection alive" but their was no description. It just seemed to beta to be of use now. That was the reason I was asking to find an alternative that is similar in function maybe with a more polished set of documentation and resources.

You could check out Debian or Slackware, both are very stable, well documented, and you can do a very minimal install

I think I am going to try debian then since most (from what I have found) of the embedded or specialized editions of firewall/routers seem to be based on that distribution. I wasn't sure you could strip most of the user interface features out but I will try it and hopefully it will be what I am looking for.

OpenBSD would be ideal for a firewall in my point of view. Or a CD-R boot with a floppy as configuration files on (write protected of course).