Hey everyone! 👋 I wanted to share a recent shift in my setup that I didn't see coming. After running OPNsense as my primary firewall/router for a solid year, I've just migrated back to pfSense this past weekend.
I really enjoyed the modern UI and some of the forward-thinking features in OPNsense. The built-in real-time interface stats are fantastic, and I think their approach to some UX flows is genuinely clever. But over time, the main thing that started to wear on me was package stability. I rely on a few key packages for my homelab and network, and I found myself hitting more snags than I'd like after updates. Sometimes a plugin would break, other times there'd be unexpected behavior that required digging into the forums or rolling back. For a core network device, that friction added up.
With pfSense, it feels like the core system *and* its package ecosystem have just had more time to bake. Things feel more settled. I know exactly what I'm getting, and updates have been remarkably uneventful for me historically. That predictability won out in the end, even if I miss a few of OPNsense's UI polish points.
I'm curious if others have had a similar experience? Has the package ecosystem been a deciding factor for anyone else, or was your choice driven by different priorities? Would love to compare notes!
good UX is non-negotiable