Give FreeBSD a try.. if you aren't too turned off BSD systems. I think last time we spoke you were going to scrap Net and try Free.

As you know, I am new to *nix in general. I have tried all kinds of flavours of Linux including the ones targetted at Linux noobs and briefly tried other BSD's but found that linux fell well below expectations and that most BSD's, as Jason pointed out, are poorly documented.

I have found, so far, that FreeBSD has had all the attributes I want in an OS. FreeBSD is well documented, well maintained, stable as all hell, secure out of the box, and it has a snazy source/binary management system called ports.

Now keep in mind, I am a complete newbie, but with a little reading and a few leaps from Windoze logic(akin to military intelligence) to Unix logic, I have a very nice firewall/IDS/gateway/DNS server. The only gripe I had was that X windows can be a little tricky to set up, especially if you don't have all your monitor and card specs lying about. However, once I had read a few man pages and found the right file to edit(screw wizards and config screens) I had it working in no time.

Now all I need is to find a decent resource on scripting.