Can anyone tell me the best and "fastest" way to set up a firewall on Slackware ? Mandrake has really quick configuration procedure . But on Slackware the ipchains and iptables man pages made me dizzy . I have been avoiding this problem for a long time because it looks like difficult stuff to do and probably i will never have the knowlegde to make a secure box with Slackware .Thanks in advance

Quickest firewall: ipchains -P input DENY

No, seriously, it's not that Slackware makes things hard but rather that it doesn't make them easy. Most Slack users are not your standard GUI-config types but ppl who like to use the flexibility of the CLI to make the box do what they want. It's also considered to be the most UNIX-like distro, which makes some of us UNIX admins feel right at home

For what it's worth, my suggestion is to take the time to read some online HOWTOs and docs, as they tend to be easier to digest than some of the man pages. If you have the time, there's nothing to be lost by trying to learn something new, and experimentation is key. There's a good ipchains howto at http://netfilter.samba.org/ipchains/HOWTO.html that may help steer you in the right direction. If not, I'm sure someone else here can steer you towards some sort of firewall-management package.