![]() Without that, I might as well build my own Linux-based firewall and manually configure the packages. CLI might be fine for some people and under some environments, but why bother when other free options give you a GUI? To me the whole point of a firewall distro is its web GUI. To be totally honest, I didn't give this one much of a chance because I was hunting for distros with web GUIs. * No GUI usually means a light build and nimble performance. * It has a growing fan-base, particularly among network engineer types that prefer router-like, CLI-only environments. * The package system was a bit rough around the edges-it was hard to tell what I was installing as there were few package descriptions. ![]() * package system allows installing add-on features While packages like snort and squid behave very well for me others like modsecurity drive me batty. This situation has improved as the distro has matured, but I wish they would stop listing buggy alpha-level packages in the add-on repository. Some add-on packages just don't work very well, and updating a package sometimes broke it. * Add-on packages and package updating could be better. You have to put some time & effort into learning it, especially if you're going to use the add-on packages. * Not as simple and easy to understand as Untangle. * has a vast following, so the documentation & forums helped me get my head around it * light and nimble-much faster boot-up/shutdown than Untangle You can get it to land space ships on Mars. * Most feature-rich free firewall distro I've ever used. * free version is very functional-plenty of features for most home networks * very easy to setup & get up and running quickly Here's a list of what I found along with my impressions. But I did notice some common themes-several of them seemed to share common ancestors / packages (e.g. I thought I had my work cut out for me since I found far more of them than I had expected. I tried just about every ISO I could get my hands on. open source community projects ("free as in speech" or free software / paid support biz models). companies with an open source community branch or free non-trial version, and 2. I scoured the internet, downloading any and all offerings from 2 principal types of entities: 1. I began my hunt for the best free firewall. However, I figured since most all those features are covered by the open source community, there must be non-commercial options out there. Being wrapped around a commercial product, Untangle charges money for its high-end features. I've been a hard-core Untangle fan for several years now, but I recently wanted to explore other firewall options. ![]()
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