June Linux Gazette (.net)

Linux Gazette (.net., accept no substitutions) is one of the more useful sites on the web. It only appears monthly, but just about every month there's an article worth reading. This month there are three of note:

1. John Murray's Bare-Bones Guide to Firewalls tells you exactly what a firewall is and does, gives some hints on what settings to use in your distribution's GUI firewall.
   • In Fedora Core 1, the GUI firewall control is redhat-config-securitylevel. If you're not running any servers, providing printers for your local network, etc., then make sure all of the boxes are unchecked.
2. Barry O'Donovan's Firewalling with netfilter/iptables tells you how to set up your own custom firewall. If you are running a mailserver, webserver, or an ftp or ssh daemon, and you want to make sure your site is secure, read here.
3. Moving off of security issues, Ben Okopnik writes of Plots, Graphs, and Curves in the World of Linux, with emphasis on the features of gnuplot. He mentions several FAQs and tutorials, which I'll repeat here:
   • The main gnuplot FAQ
   • Not-so Frequently Asked Questions about gnuplot
   • Links to tutorials and help files
   
   Of course, for notes on compiling gnuplot 4.0 from scratch, see my experiences with gnuplot.