I'm not sure whether this is the right forum to ask this, so sorry if isn't.


I have been wondering if there's any difference between using one of those specialty distros like IPCop, SmoothWall, etc for creating a firewall/router box or using something like Slackware and hardening it yourself?

Is it just a matter of ease-of-use? Or do the distros have specialty apps (or even a custom kernel?) that you can't get if you're using Slack?

I'm looking into creating your regular standalone firewall/router/proxy box for a home network.

TIA,
Drew

When you want a high-secure firewall I suggest you take a look at OpenBSD which is secure by default; you can however secure any distribution with the right amount of knowledge and time.

I suggest OpenBSD, more information on OpenBSD may be found at www.openbsd.org ... btw, the Distribution forum would have been the right one to ask this question.

A lot of distros also have a hardened edition. There's also a NSA linux which I've been meaning to look at for ages. That should be secure, but I wouldn't use it until I verify that all the packages don't contain some kind of source changes that noone wants http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/

There's gentoo hardened, there's the Secure Linux Project too.
http://www.bastille-linux.org/ They have a hardened RedHat/Mandrake

Most people have their own version of hardened Linux. I'd go and look at a few of the big ones and see what they offer.

Good ones should have http://www.lids.org/ by default

OpenBSD is also a very good choice. They have been security oriented from the start. Their biggest thrusts from what I've seen are large security audits of the code.