I briefly used pfSense before replacing it with a plain Arch installation (any distro would do just as well - I just use Arch for everything else so it's an eas

I briefly used pfSense before replacing it with a plain Arch installation (any distro would do just as well - I just use Arch for everything else so it's an easy choice). In a moderately complex home setup with wireguard to access my home network remotely, multiple VLANs/SSIDs (including one to firewall off IoT things and one that routes wan traffic to a vpn, again via wireguard), my own DNS server, a filtering web proxy for the kids, etc., I haven't encountered anything pfSense or similar would have made any easier for me. It's all achievable by editing relatively straightforward config files. The most complex bit is the firewall, but I have a terse, straightforward nftables config that does what I need and that I understand fully. I didn't really see the value in putting a layer of GUI stuff on top of it and then having to keep up with changes to that layer, and in the process obscuring what's actually going on.