I know very little about network security. I am currently using Shorewall firewall. I am thinking about switching to just using iptables because it seems more simple and there is more documentation/tutorials on it. But I am scared I would loose extra security that Shorewall offers. Does Shorewall offer any extra security over IPtables?

It's about how you use it rather than what it is. Look at the rulebase that shorewall implements and you'll see there are a lot of best practise rules for DOS and such that are there. You don't have to use them, you are free to use iptables however you want, but you gain a layer of best practise usage that you might otherwise not know about and therefore be vulnerable. If you DO know about it (or maybe just blindy copy from elsewhere) then you will be just as secure. Of coutrse, that's only for the netfilter side of shorewall which does other things besides.

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Well, my desktop is behind a router with a firewall(Asus rt-n12 with dd-wrt). I feel that I'm not really learning anything by using shorewall. If I used IPtables to learn more, could I afford to loose the protection from using IP tables with bad practice rules(since I will be learning and experimenting) with the router firewall protection? Or am I taking a risk at allowing my system to be exploited?

It depends whether you want to live in a theoretical or real life world. I'd say you're fine to mess around given your on a LAN already. Unless you're using a "DMZ host" feature on the router or similar, I'd not be too fussed. I'd probably suggest you start by looking at the current shorewall rulebase, work out why each line exists and go from there.

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