I did my homework on Firestarter and was aware that it is the gui for the
cli application. I actually was interested in using it to do internet
sharing - when on holidays with a friend we've found that only one
connection was allowed in most hotels so I hope to find a way to receive on
my WiFi interface and share via the ethernet cable. Haven't quite figured
that out yet, but will post if and when I do.

I completely uninstalled Firestarter using Synaptic; found I couldn't
connect; reinstalled with Synaptic (I used the cable connection) and found
it worked with pretty much the default settings. I quickly found that
"Locked" means nothing gets through, not that the settings are made
permanent!

I did this because I remembered that all Linux firewalls use the security
built into the kernel and all they do is set it up using the iptables
utility. Uninstalling the gui doesn't remove these settings, which is why I
had to reinstall and change them to make things work. At least that's how
this beginner understand the inner workings of Linux security... subject to
anyone's correction or amplification.

Since then I've enabled WPA-PSK security on my NetGear Router and had no
problem setting up the security on Wicd. Now I want to get both Wicd and
Firestarter to start with the login.