Hi folks, in the meantime i'm bored a bit by this thread, although I accept, that the issue is important. So I would put the following for discussion: SuSE should ship their Linux - with all the security holes - as is done always before. So almost all people who want to run linux can easily do it and everything will work what the newbies expect to work on such a system. SuSE then should also ship a tool, which should act as a kind of an interactive tutorial: <example> foreach critcal ip-service do explain to the newbie what the service does explain where the security issues are recommend a security-optimization let the newbie decide, what he wants to do done </example> The goal must be, that the newbie feels sure to know what he does, that he needs not to edit the configuration files by hand (since the newbie usually is afraid about that) and that he has the opportunity to use an undo-button or something like that. Optionally the tool could show, what modifications it does on the configuration files. This way even a dummie can get a more or less secure system, he can deactivate one service now and another tomorrow, just as he has time to study the tutorial... The I-Don't-Care-About-Security-Dummie will find a running system, and last but not least this list could be freed of some freqently repeated questions since the answers can be found within the tutorial. I know, to create such an online-tutorial is a hard thing to implement, but if the work is started now, there could be once shipped a useful version of it, maybe with SuSE 7.1 or 7.2. But even if we have to wait several years for such a tool, it would be worth to do the work. with kind regards Jürgen --------------------------------------------------------------------- Jürgen Ellinger Siemensstraße 44 88250 Weingarten e-mail: ellinger@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de ellinger@student.uni-tuebingen.de ellinger@spohn.rv.bw.schule.de