[plug] Advantages of Linux-based firewalls?

[Ryan]

As mentioned numerous time in this thread before, I think stability is a 
big one,
that's why I originally changed, so we could all reboot our windows machines
without losing connectivity.  Security is also a big one if you do it right.

Then I discovered the multitude of helpful stable services you can run.  DNS
servers, proxy servers, web server (might only use that for intranet even),
email servers....they are all free too.  You can also easily setup samba as an
NT domain controller and run custom scripts when you log into your machine,
to map drives, update the time from your linux machine etc.

The linux machine can sit out of the way and you can still fully control it 
via
telnet or whatever you want to use, once it is setup, it wont need anything
except itself, no monitor or anything.  Unless you see the light and decide to
start using linux all the time instead of windows ;)

Its pretty much near impossible to bring linux to it's knees with a few 
malformed
packets too.

Ryan.