Foo - Good Free Firewall Recommendation Please!

I'm setting up a computer for a friend and need a recommendation for a good, free, firewall. I use a commercial product and haven't kept up with free firewalls in ages.

Also, is AVG still a decent free anti-virus?

Thanks.

Zone alarm for your firewall. VG is ok, I guess. I 'm preferential towards Avast.

Comodo for firewall and avg for virus here

AVG is doing just fine for me ;) So far so good. :D

As to a Firewall, my network Gateway serves as a de facto firewall as you can't ping the IP and see what I have behind it. All you can learn is that you just pinged a Vonage Phone. ;)

I just use the firewall built into windows. It doesn't have the features of some of the other products mentioned, but unless you want a pretty high level of control, it's adequate. Note that there are lots of ways to get around the program specific control of some firewall products. For example, if you want to yak with something on the internet, just make IE do the dirty work since people trust that.

i have been using AVAST with no issues.

later.

Kerio 2.1.5 (http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/files/keriopf215.zip)

It may be rather old but it works great and uses very little computer resources, maybe 2.5mb of memory while running. It's easy to setup too and does its job.

The new stuff out there is bloatware, does more harm than good. They use so much memory that your computer will be significantly slower and cause conflicts with your other programs.

Smoothwall

Zone Alarm.

Comodo is good, as it passes almost all leak tests (apps that try to get around firewalls.)
Kerio's is old and lightweight, but is a bit behind the times. It works though, and I'd probably give this my nod.

One note. I use a third party firewall with XP and earlier (and on XP, I try to use a firewall that does not replace XP's main firewall but augments it). On Vista, I've found most software firewalls slow the machine down noticably (and do worse things), so I just stick with the OS firewall (and add rulesets to the advance part such as blocking all incoming and outgoing port 25 in case some spam zombie gets on the machine.)

Combined with a firewall and antivirus, I do recommend an anti-bot program such as Threatfire, Comodo's BoClean, or something similar. These programs sit in RAM and search for generic threats, from something trying to write an entry where it shouldn't in the registry, to executable packers/encryption. Even Symantec has a program in this category called Norton AntiBot, but I've not used it.

DDWRT Linksys fw
--
comodo pro firewall,
avg anti virus
spybot s&d with immunize

AVG rocks.

Zone Alarm for the win (even though it's a bit big for me).

An even better option is a free hardware firewall from a friend (Craig's List!).

I've got everything set up. Thanks for all of your help, folks!

AVG is doing just fine for me ;) So far so good. :D

As to a Firewall, my network Gateway serves as a de facto firewall as you can't ping the IP and see what I have behind it. All you can learn is that you just pinged a Vonage Phone. ;)

That's what I do too. Never had a problem. I think it's a pretty solid way to go.