Best distro for a non specialised router and general recommendations

Hey all,

Looking for a good distro for a computer that will primarily be a
router but will also be used for other purposes. A lot of people
recommend SmoothWall but it seems to be a little to specialised. I
will probably use IP Masq (NAT) and some SOCKs proxy. For the firewall
anything decent will do. It doesn't have to be superb since I'm
talking about 3 client computers + laptop and PDA here and a
modem+one-way terrestrial satellite here. Should mention it has to be
Linux. While I like what I hear about FreeBSD and OpenBSD, my
satellite receiver card only has Linux drivers.

I want is remote control of the router settings. This would be fine
throught a http interface. But the router will also be used for
surfing sometimes so it should have a decent GUI with an Internet
browser. A graphical FTP client is also needed. Very importantly also,
it should have Wine since I will probably use some P2P apps which may
not have good Linux equivalents out there. For control of the FTP ans
P2P apps, I also want a more advanced remote control probably control
over the GUI. As you may guess, this needs to have a Windows XP client
which I can use to control.

I think that's about all. I'm not sure if there is any distro which
might be suited other then general distro. If not, what do you
recommend? Or do you think it would be better to use a specialised
distro and then add what I need to it? This sounds as if it might be
very hard to get working properly though and difficult to
update/maintain.

I'm welcome to any suggestions of course. One things that has occured
to me is using a specialised distro together with something like
VMware and running Windows on that to provide the browser etc.
Although more secure, I don't know how well the router comp (Athlon
socket 700mhz with 448mb RAM) will handle it. Also, it will mean I
will have to set up port forwarding etc for the apps. Any comments on
this idea?

Thanks for any help all.

P.S. I'm willing to look at commercial solutions, just mention them.

"Nil Einne" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) om...
> Hey all,
>
> Looking for a good distro for a computer that will primarily be a
> router but will also be used for other purposes. A lot of people
> recommend SmoothWall but it seems to be a little to specialised. I
> will probably use IP Masq (NAT) and some SOCKs proxy. For the firewall
> anything decent will do. It doesn't have to be superb since I'm
> talking about 3 client computers + laptop and PDA here and a
> modem+one-way terrestrial satellite here. Should mention it has to be
> Linux. While I like what I hear about FreeBSD and OpenBSD, my
> satellite receiver card only has Linux drivers.
....
> Thanks for any help all.
>
> P.S. I'm willing to look at commercial solutions, just mention them.

As a Slackware user, I of course recommend Slackware. You can download
it from any of the mirrors at http://www.slackware.com/getslack/
or buy it at http://store.slackware.com/cgi-bin/store .

I didn't have any luck downloading the CD sets, bit I _did_ download
one of the isos (8.1, I think), which worked well; and finally just
bought it (9.1) along with a couple of books. I'm pretty sure it's
got everything you need, it's quite clean and straightforward, in that
it doesn't have a windos look-alike getting in your way, but I use
fvwm since I'm an old hardware guy; and, like any good Linux, comes
with everything you'll probably ever need. :-)

Good Luck!
Rich

"Rich Grise" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:ESs%b.12137$(E-Mail Removed):

> I didn't have any luck downloading the CD sets, bit I _did_ download
> one of the isos (8.1, I think), which worked well; and finally just
> bought it (9.1) along with a couple of books

All Slackware is available for download here:
http://www.linuxiso.org

Since I am running Red Hat, I am also a bit biased. Most major distributions
can be found for download at linuxiso.

--
~Ohmster

Nil Einne <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> Looking for a good distro for a computer that will primarily be a
> router but will also be used for other purposes. A lot of people
> recommend SmoothWall but it seems to be a little to specialised. I
> will probably use IP Masq (NAT) and some SOCKs proxy.

Why bother with a SOCKs proxy? Seems like more trouble than its worth
for your situation.

> For the firewall anything decent will do. It doesn't have to be superb
> since I'm talking about 3 client computers + laptop and PDA here and a
> modem+one-way terrestrial satellite here. Should mention it has to be
> Linux.

I generally run with Debian. If you're a newbie, you may prefer
something like Mandrake.

> I want is remote control of the router settings.

For me, this would be SSH all the way. If you want a point-and-click
administrative frontend, then webmin may be more to your liking.

> But the router will also be used for surfing sometimes so it should
> have a decent GUI with an Internet browser.

Firefox for the browser. Nice and fast. Small and light. Will sit well
on older machines. If you're on an older machines, I would swear away
the fuller-featured desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME. You may
like to have to a look at Fluxbox (my preference), although xfce may be
more to your liking if you like something with more features.

> For control of the FTP and
> P2P apps, I also want a more advanced remote control probably control
> over the GUI. As you may guess, this needs to have a Windows XP client
> which I can use to control.

VNC is what you need here. Any variety should do. I have had good
results with tightVNC, although I don't use it much.

--
Cameron Kerr
(E-Mail Removed) : http://nzgeeks.org/cameron/
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