Re: which distribution to choose

I can only vouch for 2 distributions that are new and have good 
community support and updates.  Fedora Core 3 (http://fedora.redhat.com) 
downloadable at 
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/3/i386/iso/
and Mandrake 10.1 Community Edition available at 
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3#10.1c.  A good firewall package 
that works very well (at least it does for me on the 4 systems I 
administer) is Firestarter available at http://www.fs-security.com.  For 
ipsec vpn serving, look at Freeswan at http://www.freeswan.org.

Fedora Core 3 comes pre-configured to run SELinux in enforced mode (will 
deny access rather than just warn of a problem) for enhanced security. 
Both of these distributions can be setup with the apps you are seeking 
(apache/squid for proxy, iptables with or without the firestarter 
enhancements and interface, tripwire, openVPN/Freeswan) quite easily. 
Additionally, both distributions support both a manual and an automatic 
update system -- manually with up2date and automatic with the yum daemon 
for FC3 and either a manual or scripted/CRON'ed urmpi command for Mandrake.

I understand that SuSE 9.2 Professional (about $90.00 US) also has the 
same features.  Having never used SuSE since ver. 5 or so (2.0.x kernel 
series), I don't know how it compares to FC3 or Mandrake.

Hope this helps,
Bob J

Jochen Witte wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I would like to set up a firewall to protect a small company network. What
> I would like to have is some kind of VPN solution (OpenVPN and ipsec),
> iptables firewalling and a secure distribution with some additional
> sec-related sofware (tripwire etc.). Also I need to run an Apache for
> proxy-requests. 
> 
> My question is, which distribution to choose for such a
> setup. I would prefer a standard distribution for easy updates and
> community support. A specific "security-enhanced" distribution would do it
> also, if it is not too "pure" :)
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Regards
> Jochen
> 
> 
>