DIY: Feeling Adventurously Geekish?

But not TOO geekish? Want to crow to your friends about your l337 sKiLlZ0rZ, but don't want to necessarily compile the Linux 2.6 kernel from Linus' raw source, complete with applying patches yourself?

Have I got a toy for you: Smoothwall 2.0. Firewall/Router/DHCP Server/Mai Tai mixer...Ok, I lied about the Mai Tai part.

If you have an old computer that is gathering dust, a small hard drive, about 64 MB of ram and 2 NICs, plus the barest knowledge of how them there networking doohickies work, you can get this up and running in about an hour. It has a ton of features, including DHCP, IPsec, Proxy server, Snort and many other lovely bits. The web-based Administration console is a dream.

This is hot stuff kids. It is also a real good tool to get a network or subnet up and running(needs a hub or switch) in minutes. You listening, you campaign organizer types? This really is a drop-in solution.

http://www.smoothwall.org
Try it. Impress your friends. Impress yourself. Be l337. But not too l337.

link?

<ducking somewhat geekily>
dp

such as a link or a source or, you know, something helpful...

Link posted. Got a little ahead of myself. :shrug:

a homemade TIVO

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/computers/article/0,12543,385155,00.html

http://www.distrowatch.org

There are several task-specific, TIVO-like distros there.

thanks