I am interested in trying out IPFire I saw that it can be added to existing Linux system. But I have 2 questions:
is this like a Linux live OS that I can run off a USB and play with before I decide to install?
Is this a minimual Linux OS that I can add apps as I choose? or is it locked like OPNsense?
Welcome to the IPFire community forum.
Have you read the documentation?
Regards
yes it is minimal OS that is easy and quick to install, what I like most is it is not locked down and pretty much you can add any apps/addon you like, but you may have to add apps/addon on your own if it does not exist.
is this like a Linux live OS that I can run off a USB and play with before I decide to install?
No(/yes)-ish. If you download the ISO it’s an installer that doesn’t run any of the firewall software, etc., it just deploys IPFire to a device.
If you download a flash image, that is more like a live OS instance that runs from that storage device (but is a bit more fiddly to do).
When you run the OPNsense ISO, it does run as a live mode (i.e. yes it will offer simple routing and web portal access straight after starting) with the installation capability to the local device - IPFire doesn’t work like that.
Is this a minimual Linux OS that I can add apps as I choose? or is it locked like OPNsense?
It is a Linux OS - when you set it up you configure the root password, etc., and can access the filesystem and execute commands as root as your would on any other linux distribution - although keep in mind the packages and functionality that is part of the IPFire build doesn’t include much in the way of excess functionality.
You can add extra using the Pakfire packages (even though they are installed via a GUI, many are linux environment / command line tools).
There is nothing stopping you adding other apps to the IPFire Linux install, however there is no other package manager or support for snap/flatpack.
And snap packages in a firewall are a big no-no in my book of ignorancy:
Canonical AFAIK still not delivered the sources for SNAP server.
Yes, there is an option like that, but not through the ISO image.
You can use the flash image, copy it onto a USB key and boot from that. That is a full-blown IPFire system then and you can test things with it and install packages.
If you decide you like IPFire you can use something like Clonezilla to copy the image to some more stable storage, or you can backup your configuration, do a fresh install from the ISO and restore your backup. Either of those should not take you longer than ten minutes.
Thanks guys! Hopefully this weekend I will download it to a flash drive and try it out. Can this also connect to VPN? I have been trying to get my OPNsense router to stay connected to NordVPN.
The version from the flash image has the same features than the ISO version. There is no difference.
However, how to connect to NordVPN I don’t know. IPFire supports OpenVPN & IPsec at this time and there are various posts on this forum on how people managed to set this up.
We don’t recommend sending all traffic through these VPN providers though: