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SmoothWall Express is an open source firewall distribution based on the GNU/Linux operating system. SmoothWall includes a hardened subset of the GNU/Linux operating system, so there is no separate OS to install. Designed for ease of use, SmoothWall is configured via a web-based GUI, and requires little or no knowledge of Linux to install or use.
SmoothWall was created by Richard Morrell and Lawrence Manning in the Summer of 2000. It was picked up by the IT press worldwide as something of a phenomenon and won several awards including Linux Format Security Product of the Year, and came runner up in the 2002 PC Pro Real World Award to Microsoft, beating Adobe and Macromedia in the voting.
In 2001, Richard and Lawrence formed SmoothWall Ltd to leverage the power of the open source product to produce a fully supported enterprise firewall named Corporate Server.
Today, Corporate is now in its 5th incarnation as Corporate Firewall V5 (launched 23rd Oct 2006). SmoothWall Advanced Firewall, launched in 2005 has become the companies biggest product providing up to 20 independent ports, Active Directory, Novell Authentication & LDAP, QoS and content security.
Dan Barron was hired by Richard and Lawrence and is now the CTO of SmoothWall Ltd, and has developed his immensely popular and effective Dans Guardian web content filtering solution into the SmoothWall Guardian range of products. Guardian now protects thousands of users in healthcare, education, government and corporate markets.
According to figures released by the company, Smoothwall currently has over 1.5 million active installations worldwide, and is now headed by Daniel Barron (CTO), George Lungley (CEO) and Richard Moore (VP Sales). Lawrence Manning remains on the team as chief software architect.
Current Version
* SmoothWall Express: SmoothWall Express 2.0 SP1.
* SmoothWall Corporate Firewall: SmoothWall Corporate Firewall V5.
* SmoothWall Advanced Firewall: SmoothWall Advanced Firewall V2.
SmoothWall Express 3.0
On September 1, 2005, the fifth anniversary of the original SmoothWall firewall, an alpha version of Smoothwall 3.0 was released, code named "Grizzly". A second alpha version was released on December 25, 2005, code named "Panda". Then most recently on December 23, 2006 the most recent alpha version was released named Koala. [http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21583 Smoothwall Express 3.0 Koala ISO]
Express 3 is currently slated for release in February 2007 at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
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