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> I find that the BSDs are becoming increasingly reluctant to > any change that goes against their principles which I > sometimes find a tad misplaced.
by stock_toaster 10y ago
> I find that the BSDs are becoming increasingly reluctant to
> any change that goes against their principles which I
> sometimes find a tad misplaced.
This seems a bit uncharitable. pfsense is an open source firewall product, made/released by a company that sells support and services. I wouldn't call it "one of the BSDs" any more than I would call say.. Sophos Firewall or Smoothwall as linux distributions.
Running a properly configured, headless linux box as a firewall would indeed be a fine choice for those technically capable, similarly so would a FreeBSD or OpenBSD install.
- ktta 10y agoI'm not calling it one of the BSDs, but you still have to consider who's running the show. The FreeBSD part behind pfSense is as important as the Debian beind VyOS (although I'm not suggesting VyOS here). If things are completely same from a management/security perspective, then I'd be wrong but it does make a difference when it comes to management, updates, and compatibility etc. Your definition of technically capable is a bit vague. What can a technically capable user do? It can vary from barely being able to use the cli and minimal understanding of basic networking, to being able to compile/tune the kernel by themselves and write drivers in case they are missing.