My current project is remote connection to my home private network behind a Suse router/firewall/DSL modem with IP_ passthrough.

GUI is desirable.

I can connect with SSH, but would like to try VPN.

The problem is that there are so many protocol options.

All are pretty complicated for my experience level.

To minimize false starts, I would appreciate suggestions as to which protocol to use, assuming that I will have Win XP on the remote laptop.

Security is important, but the network is mainly for my learning, with no sensitive data.

Thanks.

try vnc or tightvnc.

VNC is useful, and may be useful to him. Still, it is not what he asked.

I know that XP supports PPTP, and I believe it supports IPSEC. I'm interested myself in what others might say on this subject.

I have an access point which only supports WEP which is unsecure.

That's why I configured an OpenVPN server on my Linux router and installed an OpenVPN client on my clients to get a secure wireless access to my local systems. I only opened the VPN port on my Linux router so nobody can access my local net without OpenVPN.

This took me about 1 hour to set up because the OpenVPN doc is very detailed.

Did you already try OpenVPN?