Any firewalls with a non graphical UI?

I need to choose a new software firewall.

So, I should simply read some reviews and test results, browse some forums, and then get the one that I think is likely to be best suited for my useds. Easy, yes?

Unfortunately not, as there is one very specific requirement that few firewalls seem capable of meeting.

Due to sight problems, I need to use a high contrast colour scheme to make my PC accessible. This is light text on a dark background. Anything other than this is unusable.

So, my system is set to use these colours. You would hope that this would resolve things, but most software now uses colours that are hard coded into the application. This is nearly always a colour scheme that is inaccessible to me, and will not inherit system colours. Sometimes, the software will simply get 'confused' by my colour scheme, commonly resulting in white text on a white background.

So, I have spent the past week testing numerous firewalls. These include:

Avira
Comodo
Jetico
Kaspersky
Look 'n' Stop
Outpost Pro
PC Tools
Privatefirewall
Webroot

The only one that has come close to being accessible is Jetico. However, I was a little daunted by the sheer volume of intervention it required.

I would love to be able to choose the 'best' firewall'. Unfortunatley it looks like I shall have to settle for whatever will work with a high contrast colour scheme.

One further complication is that it needs to run on Vista (which explains why the list of firewalls that I have already tested is quite short).

So, does anybody know of any other firewalls that might work? Probably the most likely candidates are those that have a GUI that gets criticised for looking like it dates from the Windows 3.11 days.

 

I was going to suggest Filseclab until I seen "Vista"...sorry.

 

Use the built in Vista firewall and forget about outbound filtering, unless you rarely change your system. I have some posts about using it with outbound filtering enabled. You have pretty much tried all the stand alone firewalls that run on Vista. What's left are the suites with AV.

If you are concerned about outbound "leaks", Vista's OS hardening and UAC provide fairly good protection along with a conventional AV.

Just curious, but which applications have you found that do inherit the high contrast color scheme. Lucky me, all I need is a $10 pair of reading glasses.

 

Do you mean non graphical or plain? For non graphical, ipfw is great, the whole thing is configured through a text file with SPI and everything. --edit---(sorry, did not read that you needed vista)

Cheers,

Alphalutra1

 

WIPFW v0.2.8 released (2006-12-12) Would this even be Vista-ready

 

IPFW, looks like a minimalist packet filter for experts only. If it works on Vista, I would be amazed, and its probably inbound only. If all the OP needs/wants is inbound protection the built in Vista will do the job, but I suspect he is looking for outbound filtering.

 

You could try Cfosspeed:

http://www.cfos.de/speed/cfosspeed_e.htm

It's been a while but when I tried it the firewall used a text file to configure.

 

Will Ghost Wall work for you?

Ugggh...sorry, never mind