OPNsense 22.1 Released With This Open-Source Firewall Now Powered By FreeBSD 13

[phoronix]

Phoronix: OPNsense 22.1 Released With This Open-Source Firewall Now Powered By FreeBSD 13

OPNsense, the FreeBSD-based firewall/router software stack forked from pfSense, is out with its first major release of 2022...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OPNsense-22.1-Released

[peterhoeg]

Unless you have specific requirements that only another product will fulfill, I would argue that OPNsense should be the default choice for moderately technical users. It is simply phenomenal.

[Ground0]

Why you mean defult for moderatly? I use it in bigger Project for ex. Gov and like Biotech companys...

[peterhoeg]

We're using it for work as well - it's awesome. I much prefer it to the various proprietary firewall products.

What I meant (and expressed poorly) was that all home users with moderate technical proficiency (and up) should absolutely use this.

[kylew77]

I'm curious why more firewall projects based on pf don't use OpenBSD as a base since it is more secure and the origin project for pf. FreeBSD is less secure, but has faster networking than OpenBSD so I suspect the faster networking part might be why more routers/firewalls use FreeBSD as the base.

[edwaleni]

Did they finally get the Realtek support under BSD fixed and integrated? Or is it still futzware?

[MarkG]

Just updated to 22.1, and the upgrade went well -- with one huge (for me) exception. OPNsense has deprecated their Dynamic-DNS client (not well maintained on GitHub, but has been rock-solid (for me) for several years), and the replacement seems to be, at best, pathetic, and only supports a few DDNS servers.

It seems I would have been fine until 22.7 (scheduled for 6 months from now) when they'll officially remove the current DDNS client from their distro. But, one of my pet-peeves is to avoid time-bombs to the extent possible.

My solution was to shut down their DDNS stuff, and add an update client (srsly just a 1-line cron-job) to a machine that I already run 24x7.

Overall, I'm still trying to decide how 'happy' I am with this update (and yeah, I've contributed to OPNsense, but not enough to get a vote).

[castlefox]

We're using it for work as well - it's awesome. I much prefer it to the various proprietary firewall products.

What I meant (and expressed poorly) was that all home users with moderate technical proficiency (and up) should absolutely use this.

I am decent with computers but I am new to networking to using/managing firewalls. Does OPNsense 22.1 have good enough documentation that I could figure it out myself?
I am tempted to put OPNsense 22.1 on some hardware for my small home network.

[aht0]

Did they finally get the Realtek support under BSD fixed and integrated? Or is it still futzware?

If you are for some Godforsaken reason using RTL8139 from year 2000 then yes, its futzware. Sucked even on Windows at that. pfSense box with those shitty cards rebooted every 5min.

Newer Realteks seem to be fine in comparison although I've mostly used Intel dual-NICs.

[brad0]

If you are for some Godforsaken reason using RTL8139 from year 2000 then yes, its futzware. Sucked even on Windows at that. pfSense box with those shitty cards rebooted every 5min.

Newer Realteks seem to be fine in comparison although I've mostly used Intel dual-NICs.

He is not talking about RTL8139. This affects all of their Gigabit controllers, RTL8168 / 8169 / 8110, etc.

They're definitely not fine. That's the whole point of the comment.