Question

Is smoothwall as safe as a linksys router??

With all the security holes showing up in "home" routers, its good practice not to rely on them for your security. Then again, smoothwall or any firewall is only as good as it is configured. I personally haven't used smoothwall but it sounds like a descent product. One nice thing with using linux as a firewall/nat router is that you have a lot more control over the design and implementation... or I guess that could be a bad thing...

Drew

smoothwall is as safe / unsafe as a hardened linux system.
There is no comparison here, you're talking about a dedicated firewalling system as opposed to a dedicated firewalling system.