Anybody know of a good, free firewall that can be installed on XP Home Edition?

Zone alarm.

Heard quite alot of things 'bout it... nonsensical stuff that one does, so am not too eager to take that one.

I use it too. Can only recommend it...

I know that a recent version of Zonealarm wouldn't work with other firewalls and would just block everything and that's what led me to get rid of it, I don't know if it's been updated since that.

Kerio Personal Firewall seems to be a good option too... anybody heard 'bout that one?

Well, I didn't use other firewall besides ZoneAlarm at all, and I have ZoneAlarm PRO too, so I didn't encounter just about any troubles with it...
I heard that this one is good, also.

I use ZA too and I can only praise it. Never encoutered a problem and it's always active even if my explorer.exe fall appart (and God knows it does at time).

Could you bother telling us what is your grudge against ZA Kon-Tiki? Would like to know.

Grudge not, but I've heard things like it being too picky, alarming even when somebody just talks to you on Msn... stuff like that. I dunno which source I've had it from, though. Been too long.

Your source was obvious bad informed or did not know how to use a firewall prior to anything else. ;)