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From: Manuel Krummenacher mkr@mkr-tech.ch

I get your point. You have to do some work to get it running, but its far away from days. If you don't need serial access, you can skip the part with the baud-rate configuration. The interfaces can be assigned from the web interface. (And you don't have to unmount the CF card as stated in the article, because dd doesn't need it mounted.) I get an ALIX up and running in about an hour incl. (simple) configuration.

+ 3-4 hours to read all the pieces of documentation, choosing the right board that you want to use, all the software options that are available, adding the wireless cards of proper vendor, chatting on this list etc.

+ 1 hour, as you say, to assemble it all together and boot for the first time

+ 1-2 hours to get through all the configuration options and getting to know the product

+ 1 hour to build a proper backup solution

At the end of the day, you get your firewall which will most probably need few hours more for fine-tuning etc.

For my own office, I would consider this as an option.

If I'd intend to install it to a customer, it needs at least few dozens of installations before it pays back all the invested time. For a small number of installations, a small Cisco PIX firewall might be much easier to get.

just my two cents, I'm vendor-agnostic, and open source supporter :-)