IPFire

Reader supplied reviews for IPFire Average rating 8.8 from 8 review(s) Please specify which version of the distribtion you are reviewing. Please selecting a rating in the range of 1-10. Please write at least a few sentences about the distribution while limiting your review to 4080 characters. What are your thoughts on IPFire? Please include a few pros and a few cons, along with your overall impression of the operating system. Our FAQ page has tips on writing a good mini-review. Version: -- 2.27-core1762.25-core1582.23-core1392.21-core1302.19-core1202.17-core992.15-core862.13-core762.11-core652.9-core52 Rating:    -- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 out of 10 Your review (minimum 250 words): Past reviews - sort by: DateVotes Version: 2.27-core173 Rating: 10 Date: 2023-03-21 Votes: 2 N00b review, home user. Background is owning a Linux-based VDSL2 modem/router/wifi box which is no longer receiving updates. My goal was to dumb/split down that thingy into two separate entities, namely a dumb DSL modem for IPfire RED side (aka public interwebs), and a simple ethernet+wifi switch which talks to IPfire on the GREEN side, what with ipfire keeping pub and private separate. Lo and behold, ipfire pretty much worked out of the box, and compared to the firewall in my older combo box, the interface felt friggin' user *friendly*! Samba add-on made it easy enough to turn ipfire into a poor man's home NAS. Enabled SSH server, went rogue in the CLI and now the damn thing is a full bitcoin node as well. Long story short, this is what I tried to do with barebones Debian but did not know how... so much stuff in this distro which just manages to demystify swamp monster... er, interwebs... a little, for a n00b. I love that this is an independent distro with some specific goals, with carefully chosen options (PAKfire) afaict. Me likee! Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2.27-core173 Rating: 10 Date: 2023-03-04 Votes: 1 This is a very nice system for building your own firewall. I got a new ISP and they shipped an awful locked-down Amazon unit that needed a bluetooth-enabled smartphone to talk to it so I wanted something else. Commercial stuff is expensive, and you want to be sure to get security updates. I tried OpnSense but the lack of decent wireless support on BSD was no good for me, I don't want to have a separate access point. This is easy to install and configure, I used an old SFF office computer I rescued from the trash, with a second NIC installed. A decent WiFi dongle allows it to run as an AP as well, but make sure the device you choose supports AP mode. The forum and Wiki are great, and the developers respond promptly to questions. IPFire uses few system resources and has some excellent features such as the Intrusion Prevention system. There are also lots of logging options to see what's happening. My system has been running for over a year now, only rebooted for system updates. Was this review helpful? Yes No Version: 2.27-core163 Rating: 9 Date: 2022-02-27 Votes: 18 I am a former Freesco user and when it became hard to source hardware, I switched. I tried pfSense, and whilst I was impressed with what you can do, it really doesn't play nice with some hardware. Based on FreeBSD, it is less in tune with some consumer grade stuff. IpFire was next and being a Linux based firewall, it handles consumer stuff much better, yielding more reliability in my situation. Overall config is easy, forum support is good, helpful, feature set from a security perspective very impressive. I managed to hook up my UPS easily, configure RED to the right VLAN, and get SSH setup securely. Recently I've moved the hardware to a simple appliance, and that combo works so well, I have literally all the services up and running. I like the ease of setting your own DNS servers, avoiding those the ISP provides and switching to secure DNS. OpenVPN is easy to set up and get going, and the DynamicDNS feature works well, it automatically maintains the assigned IP for you, allowing you easily connect from the outside. Reporting is good, lots of info. I handle around 30-50TB every day, and it is rock solid. I have it reboot occasionally to clear the cache, but it's not really needed. Updates are frequent and useful, and have been for years. I've made several donations over the years to support the effort. Probably it's biggest weakness is something pfSense and OPNSense can do, the routing part. There is some VLAN support, but if your ISP uses multiple RED's (or external networks in non IPFire speak), IpFire can't handle it, there is also not much in IPv6 support. Supposedly there is rewrite on the way supporting IPv6, but this is not a wealthy community, so progress is slow. So for most SOHO scenarios, IpFire is great, but it might not be enough for your needs. It is true open source, well maintained by a group that knows what they are doing. The other Linux based offerings seem more the fremium model, even though they blab open source, their power has to be unlocked through payments. I would never go that route, so if IpFire can't do it for me, I'd go to pfSense, or OPNSense. So in my mind, IpFire is the best Linux based open source firewall distro out there. And that's quite something. Was this review helpful? Yes No See all 8 reader reviews of IPFire...