How secure is the firewall?

You'll be fine without a firewall, unless someone really wants to attack you, or you get hit with a trojan.

There are 2 firewalls built into OS X 10.5. The first is the application firewall in System Preferences, which is mediocre.

The second is IPFW, which is a standard UNIX firewall and is the best firewall out there, but Apple has it disabled by default. You can configure it with the command line or with a free program called WaterRoof.

 

Both of Leopard's firewalls will do a fine job.

Just don't enable any "sharing" services that you don't need, and you'll be fine.

 

mac novice

can you say a little more about waterroof? i think this is what i am looking for, as i seem to be getting a bunch of attack messages as of late - virus warnings, download this anti-spyware, etc. thankfully, my mac has been fine and nothing has been compromised but since everyone is against AV programs, then perhaps this is in order.

thanks!

 

These aren't likely to be real messages. They're more likely to be pop-ups from your browser from web sites that want to infect (typically Windows) computers with their spamware.

Configuring a pop-up blocker in your internet browser will reduce these "warnings" significantly.