Engarde vs. Smoothwall

[johnjacobjingleheimersmit]

I'm setting up a home network soon and I would like to have a separate firewall and web server. I have found two products which might do the jobs.
Engarde Linux and Smoothwall. Both are firewalls as far as I know, but Engarde does do web serving as well. Both have web interfaces and Engarde seems to have a few better services than Smoothwall, eg Tripwire.

I was thinking that the web server would run Engarde and the Firewall would run Smoothwall. But I think Engarde might do a better job as a firewall. What do you think I should do?

I could use two pc's both with Engarde (One configured as a web server and one as a firewall) or two with Smoothwall as the firewall and Engarde as the web server and disable the firewall services.

OR

I could use one pc configured with Engarde as a webserver and firewall.

From your experience with either of them, what would you recommend? Or what would you do?

BTW, Engarde is ~140mb and Smoothwall ~20mb but size isn't too much of a problem for me, just the security really.

Cheers

[RTFM]

I've never used either one of these things you mention, but why not use Apache and the Linux kernel's iptables ?

[Choozo]

Go for Smoothie as the firewall!

The reason for this is simple; a firewall should be just that - a firewall - and not be 'compromised' by running additional non-essential services.
Smoothwall does that job remarkably well :D

Cheers :)

[UkrainianTire]

I'm in no way shape or form a linux expert, but i do know web security theory reasonably well.

I'd suggest you have a dedicated machine set up as your firewall, by running a webserver on it as well it opens it up for attack significantly.
(Much like choozo said)

If you're pretty new to linux you may wish to take a look at Mandrake's Single Network Firewall v 7.2 - they seem to make a decent product although i've never used the firewall program itself.

Hope this helps.