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State of the Distribution: Networking
Networking is crucial not only because without it most of the usefulness of a computer is gone but because it allows a user to ask for help. For that reason we go to great pains in order the user being not only able to reach the Internet but also to have a working solution for mail and possibly news.PPP: configuring for modem users
Indy will allow individual users to end the installation with PPP configured. If the user does not do it at install time he will be able to do it later thanks to the Indialer program. It was a design requirement for Indialer to not need X in order to allow its use by people having problems with X. Another one of its projected features is to allow DNS auto configuration.Networking programs, tools and utilities
We included two relatively attractive programs for mail and news, respectively TkRat and Peruser. Both allow off-line message reading and composing for people who live in countries where phone rates reach extortionist levels.For people preferring to use a mail server we included install-sendmail and modified it in order to give it a graphical interface while still allowing its use out of X.
Independence's init-scripts contain some tricks in order for daemons ( notably sendmail and wwwoffle ) to notice the line is up and act accordingly. We included wwwoffle because its features are in our opinion more suitable for dial-up users than those of squid.
We also include an ICQ client.
Networking security
At Independence we don't assume the user is protected by a firewall from the Internet or that he knows how to protect a computer from aggressions coming through the net. Even being on a temporary link does not protect you from aggressions due to the possibility of one of the sites you connect using your address to try to scan your box looking for security holes. In order to help the user we have included two programs: LOKKIT makes it trivial to protect your box because it will block any connection coming through the interface connected to the Internet (i.e. your modem) unless you explicitly instruct it to do the opposite. GFCC is a graphical program that allows more sophisticated work like allowing connections only from specified addresses or masquerading a LAN with fake addresses behind a router/firewall.TODO
We need a more attractive mail TkRat and Peruser development seems stopped. I considered Mahoganny for mail but I am unconvinced and XFmail has still the same crappy licence AFAIK. For news PAN seems promising but it will wait next edition. The mail and news clients of KDE hog way too much memory for our tastes.Jean Francois Martinez
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