ant-virus and firewall
 

I am so new at this...

What do I do about anti-virus protection on RH 8.0 ... can I really trust the firewall on RH 8.0... should I or can I look elsewhere?

forget about viruses. it might be an issue in 10 years, it's not one now. search this site for some more opinons, but this ain't windows...

firewall... well all firewalls in linux are based around iptables (or iphcains on older systems) which is n turn based around the netfilter module, so it's all down to how the firewall front end you are using configures iptables. personally i use an app called firestarter as i'm too much of a coward to write my oen by hand, but there's no reason that redhats system should be faulty. Havign said that though I get the impression that it's pretty closed off and not particular easy to personalise.

Linux doesn't really require anti-virus protection. There are very few viruses for Linux because it's secure (i.e. even if a user downloads a malicious program by accident, it cannot do a lot of damage because it is limited by the strict access restrictions of that user; on Windoze, even the latest versions, virtually any user can mess up the whole system, despite the fact that the user may not have had any access to the entire system, it's much easier to bypass security on WIndoze than on Linux, it all boils down to that). The rule of thumb on Linux is the following: "as long as you keep your firewall and all your critical publically-accesible programs up to date, you should be fine".

The firewall that comes with Linux is really the only firewall for Linux (there's an older version, but it's pretty much the same idea and it's becoming obsolete by the minute, so stick with what you have on RH8). It's built into it at the core. In this case, it's really not which firewall program you use, but it's how you configure the firewall (be it manually or by using a program like the RedHat Firewall setup program/control panel). That's what really matters.

The firewall under Linux is very, very powerful (in fact I think the Linux firewall is one of the most powerful and advanced firewalls of all operating systems). The actual name for the Linux firewall is iptables (IP for Internet Protocol and Tables as in tables of filtering rules). The RedHat 8.0 firewall configuration program is fine for a desktop setup, but if you want to run a server, you really need to get a more powerful config program, such as gShield.

For :newbie: purposes, I'd say that the RedHat 8.0 firewall setup program is quite allright. On the other hand if you really want to learn how to really set up a firewall, you should check out gShield or just study the iptables command directly (I am giving you the options in the order of complexity ;) ).

thanks gang... I am liking this more and more

You're welcome. BTW, welcome to the world of Linux and UNIX! I am sure you'll love it (as long as you don't try to run Windoze games on Linux :p, which can be a pain).

the command line version of f-prot is free for dos and
linux. i have it on a linux knoppix cdrom that i carry with
me to check other people's computers. it can check
windows and linux for virii from linux, which makes me
happy.

Well, sometimes a virus protection is what you need to have, even on a Linux machine. The main reason is a mail server where you need to scan attachments (for people using Windows). Also when you run a Samba server... In other cases, you don't need it.