Hi,

I've used lots of Linux-based firewalls before shifting to m0n0, some of 
the reasons why I love it are:

1. The interface. It's truly brilliant. Very well laid-out, very easy to 
easy, excellent use of graphical icons without going too far etc.

2. The feature set. Things like traffic shaping, VPNs etc are all there 
and they all work well. I setup a VPN to a friend running IPCop and the 
interface his end was far less user-friendly IMO. I make use of a fair 
few of the features, such as the SNMP support (with ifgraph on another 
machine), the SVG graphs etc. It just feels very polished and very pro.

3. Size/installation method. I run mine on a PC with a CF card, so I 
have no drives, only one fan (PSU) and it fits in a small space. I've 
actually installed my m0n0wall in a drawer :) To me, it says a lot that 
m0n0 is distributed as a ~5meg image. No bloat, no BS, but still lots of 
useful features.

4. The PHP/XML thing. I'm a PHP developer who likes XML so when I read 
about the base configuration on the m0n0 site, that pulled me in. The 
idea of using PHP for startup scripts etc seemed very cool and I gave it 
a go. I haven't looked back since...

BSD is actually what I would call an incidental factor. I'm of the 
opinion that, with enough effort, you could probably achieve something 
almost identical in Linux. As such, the base OS doesn't bother me much. 
However, I know BSD is renowned for networking performance, is generally 
very secure and it seems to be working great, so it's far from a 
downside to me...

I have friends on both IPCop and Smoothwall who I will be "converting" 
as soon as I can, that's how strongly I feel m0n0 is superior. Some may 
disagree but that's my opinion. Out of all the firewalls I've tried in 
this sector, I personally rank m0n0 as the best.

The only thing that saddens me a touch is the requirement for some kind 
of BSD setup to develop for it. I run a couple of Linux servers here and 
have no real desire to switch to BSD and learn all about it etc, so I 
can't really contribute code :( I'd love to have a poke about with 
m0n0's innards but, at present, it's just not practical for me to do so.

Cheers,

Chris Taylor

Dr Who wrote:
> Hi folks...
> I've used smoothwall for about one year and move to m0n0 one year ago
> because principally I move all servers from Linux to FreeBSD.
> 
> Yesterday evening, while with some friends for a beer, we was talking about
> firewall...and of course the question arrived to me :
> 
> "m0n0 ? why m0n0 and not IPCOP" ?
> 
> Even I've tried to explain the pro of m0n0, etc... I've been not able to
> tell straight a strong valid reason, except that is based on FreeBSD
> (instead of linux), its development style, etc...
> 
> Driving back home, I realized, as often happen that I should have said more
> to validate the power of M0n0, but I failed...
> 
> So I would like to know from those of you who previously used
> IPCOP,SMOOTHWALL and any other linux based firewall, why you shifted to M0n0
> and why m0n0 (iyho) is better than linux.
> 
> I don't want to open a flame, a war...or anthing else similar.
> I'm an happy m0n0 user, just need your valid experience.
> 
> Of course if this is not going to waste your time...
> Otherwise sorry...
> 
> Thank you
> D
> 
> 
> 
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