[ILUG-BOM] Recommend a Linux distro

[Vihan Pandey]

> A friend of mine is a network admin. Recently, I had a talk with him and
> convinced him to use GNU/Linux to control the internet access to all
> the client PCs in his organization. His requirements are pretty simple
> and can be satisfied by using Squid. But the problem is that his
> knowledge of GNU/Linux is nill, zero!
>
> Now I would really like to know if there is some distro that can meet
> his requirements ( Proxy, NAT, DNS Cache, Firewall easy to setup and
> web based administration of the server ). You know something that would
> need him to only pop in the CD on a fresh machine - install
> automatically without creating too much fuss about partitioning scheme,
> the packages that he wants etc.. etc.. and would give him a simple web
> based interface ( something like we have on cheap routers or similar to
> webmin ).


The things you ask are pretty distribution neutral. Pretty much any disto
could do it. Monowall, Shorewall and its cousins could meet you web based
admined firewall needs. Someone once told me about PHP Squid Pass and DNS
admin those could help you too.

Most of the common distro's out there have a system of fetching and
installing packages(apt, yum etc.) and their dependencies to make life easy,
just pick one. i would personally recommend Debian, if you want it easier go
for Ubuntu. For the record i respect ALL distributions that respect
freedom(written, just in case someone likes another disto better ;-))

Regards,

- vihan