Hi Joel,
you will not get any overwhelming performance out of the Raspberry Pi 3B+, especially
when it comes to the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), but anyway:
Since I am not sure what exactly went wrong in your case: Did you follow the
installation instructions for Raspberry Pi 3B+?
P.S. Is there a way to reach out to one of the developers???
Yes. Please refer to wiki.ipfire.org - Development and wiki.ipfire.org - Getting in touch with the developers for further information.
Thanks, and best regards,
Peter Müller