Anybody know if there are any Firewalls
that are Open Source, or Free that are
worth having?
Webroot Desktop Firewall is free now: http://www.webroot.co.uk/En_GB/consumer-products-desktopfirewall.html
I also run Comodo Firewall + AntiVirus.
Now it is free but used to be paid.
If it’s not used that often, why bother locking it down to the app level?
Unless you frequent dodgy sites, install dodgy software or have a mindless moment and open a postcard attachment via email, your router should be enough.
I have 2 laptops that are used infrequently - both have avg free. No incidents over the past 3 years.
If you are looking only for a firewall and not a security suite then i can recommend to you the following free products:
- ZoneAlarm Free
- Wallix Pro
- Outpost Firewall Free.
What sort of firewall?
the kind that blocks bad stuff from getting into one’s PC
and the kind that enablwes one to control what progs
on one’s PC from connecting to the net if one doesn’t
want them too.
You know, a firewall like you’d get if you got the
Norton or AVG security suite
Here’s a few free ones:
Comodo
ZoneAlarm
AVG
Windows Vista
Windows 7
AVG and this one in Windows 7, I hope these will help you.
I wouldn’t call Windows 7 “free”
I’m thinking of going with a free anti-virus / firewall for my laptop since I only
use it when I travel, which isn’t all that often (most of the time I’m in the
office using my primary desktop PC)
I guess I’ll look into the free version of AVG.
I thought all they offered in their free version was just the anti-virus, so I need to
go read about this on their website to see exactly what the free version offers.
The firewall that comes with Windows 7 is free if you are already running Windows 7. Since you can’t buy that firewall separately the only way to obtain that particular firewall is as a free utility with the operating system.
Windows 7 is not free but the Windows 7 firewall is free in the only situation where you can run it.
I know, but seriously…after all the issues Microsoft has had with security…
Who in their right mind is going to trust their firewall???
I know I wouldn’t
Microsoft’s firewall is actually very good, I’ve seen security experts test firewalls to the point of destruction and it might interest you to know that Microsoft was among the top scorers (along with Kaspersky’s paid firewall in the suite, Comodo (my personal favourite), most of Microsoft’s issues are simply down to exploits in programming code, not the safety or general security of their firewall solution. As a point of fact, if you have a router, it will already have a firewall blocking most bad traffic hitting your machine, the only benefit for a software firewall is to control what apps can access the web. 
Yessir, we have a router…and I’m fixing to switch to a special VPN router using
VPN services from http://www.WiTopia.net so once that is in place, we should
be fairly secure.
On top of that, I’m also running AVG Internet Security 9.0
(this is on our main system)
But, the reason I’m looking for something open source is for my Laptop
which isn’t used that often…so I’d rather not have to pay additional
fees since this computer is only used occasionally
My laptop is WinXP Pro, so I’m probably not going to be upgrading
that to Windows 7 anytime soon.