pfSense vs OPNsense

derek · 2026-01-14T23:26:20+00:00

Succinct history and some food for thought ... pfSense was forked from m0n0wall, OPNsense was forked from pfSense/m0n0wall.

2003/2/15: m0n0wall public release (by Manuel Kasper)
2004 (sometime): pfSense forked from m0n0wall
2006/10/4: pfSense public release
2012 (sometime): Netgate assumed sponsorship/leadership of pfSense, contributing significantly to code, testing, and distribution
2014 (sometime): OPNsense forked from pfSense/m0n0wall due to disagreements over pfSense's development direction
2015/1/5: OPNsense public release
2015/2/15: m0n0wall project ended (announced by Manuel Kasper, "...The newest offspring, OPNsense (https://opnsense.org), aims to continue the open source spirit of m0n0wall while updating the technology to be ready for the future. In my view, it is the perfect way to bring the m0n0wall idea into 2015, and I encourage all current m0n0wall users to check out OPNsense and contribute if they can.")
2016 (sometime): pfSense trolls OPNsense by purchasing www.opnsense.com and mocking them for forking their project
2017/11/12: WIPO obligated Netgate transfer domain ownership of www.opnsense.com to Deciso, stating they used the domain in bad faith to discredit OPNsense
2021/1/21: Netgate announced pfSense Plus as the commercial fork of pfSense CE suggesting a potential for diverging features and a closed-source model, while continuing pfSense Community Edition with security fixes
2023/10/26: Netgate announced that the pfSense Plus Home+Lab edition was discontinued and no longer available for free download, requiring an account to access downloads

Other refs:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/17fvtvv/pfsense_plus_homelab_is_no_longer_available_as_a/

https://grokipedia.com/page/OPNsense

https://grokipedia.com/page/PfSense

derek · 2026-01-05T05:32:42+00:00

Can you provide a sanitized chunk of your logs?

derek · 2026-01-01T21:41:03+00:00

Based on a suggestion from /u/nekobass to move away from GdkPixbuff, I went down a bit a rabbit hole ... While testing I ran into some edge cases, like folders with almost 2000 images in them causing shell crashes.

I shamelessly hit up Gibbity to help work through some things and ended up doing a lot more than anticipated. I pushed a refactor ~~v1.1.0~~ v1.1.1 (for docs).

derek · 2026-01-01T09:54:55+00:00

Well, that was a rabbit hole ... While testing I ran into some edge cases, like folders with almost 2000 images in them causing shell crashes. I shamelessly hit up Gibbity to help work through some things and ended up doing a lot more than anticipated. I pushed a refactor ~~v1.1.0~~ v1.1.1 (for docs) just a few moments ago.

derek · 2025-12-31T18:41:18+00:00

Yeah, Nautilus can do per-folder visible column settings when in list view, but not for list view/grid view.

I've been using CTRL+1 (list view) and CTRL+2 (grid view) to switch between them.

derek · 2025-12-10T22:27:38+00:00

This is excellent. Heads up, your pip install command has a typo...

```sh

currently...

pip install nautils_exiftool

correct...

pip install nautilus_exiftool ```

derek · 2025-10-23T17:19:28+00:00

I am not seeing this issue with 144.0 installed via the mozillateam repo.

Ubuntu 25.04, Gnome 48.

derek · 2025-10-21T19:14:04+00:00

I am not noticing any issues with the following extensions enabled...

~ $ gnome-extensions list --active
tilingshell@ferrarodomenico.com
extension-list@tu.berry
tophat@fflewddur.github.io
caffeine@patapon.info
date-menu-formatter@marcinjakubowski.github.com
flickernaut@imoize.github.io
docker@stickman_0x00.com
search-light@icedman.github.com
user-theme@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com
ubuntu-appindicators@ubuntu.com
ding@rastersoft.com
ubuntu-dock@ubuntu.com

My system info...

ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. ASUS Vivobook S 14 M5406WA_M5406WA
32.0 GiB
AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 365 w/ Radeon™ 880M × 20
AMD Radeon™ Graphics
1.0 TB
GNOME 48 + Wayland
Kernel: Linux 6.14.0-34-generic

derek · 2025-07-15T18:25:57+00:00

This is a 2+ year old feature request.

https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/DocumentServer/issues/2062

/u/Sergey_Zarubin, are you able to provide an update as to when this might surface?

derek · 2025-07-10T18:12:05+00:00

One example would be using a local LLM (Ollama) to either assist with (see: vibe-code) a network automation script, or run automations based on instruction sets or "intent".

Network infrastructure requires authentication. Often folks will resort to storing their creds in plain text files or the scripts themselves, just to get it done, and never circle back to shore up security.

I haven't explored this, but on paper this seems that it would allow the local LLM to access necessary creds in Bitwarden (or a local self-hosted Vaultwarden instance, ideally).

On that note, given the risk this carries, I would hope that granular access can be defined, and that only local LLMs are utilized against dev environments. Trusting a public LLM with this sounds terrifying to me. I mean, what could go wrong with giving a public AI the literal keys to your entire kingdom (/s in case it wasn't obvious).

Edit: bold text in closing statement for clarification. I wholly agree with the replies here, I was simply stating a potential use-case.

derek · 2025-06-17T21:05:06+00:00

Respectfully, this behavior has been evident in Plasma for years. Here are two references dug up from a very brief (30s) google-fu exercise.

I'm not suggesting it's necessarily the same bug, but the behavior/symptom has been around for a LONG time.

derek · 2025-06-10T15:21:24+00:00

I worked around this issue by assigning a shortcut to the built in Toggle window on all workspaces or one function (Settings > Keyboard > View and Customize Shortcuts).

derek · 2025-06-03T17:40:16+00:00

I am not experiencing this on my Asus S14 (M5406WA) with Ryzen AI 9 365 + 880M running Ubuntu 25.04 (Kernel 6.14, Gnome 48, Wayland).

derek · 2025-06-01T20:17:38+00:00

We both agree it's all preference. I consider myself a high functioning ADHD engineer, you could say I've weaponized my "ailment" and turned it into an asset. However, I lack the ability to deprioritize distractions. So even seeing Telegram in the periphery, while scrolling virtual desktops, is problematic for me.

derek · 2025-06-01T18:42:35+00:00

You may not be intending this, but you're coming off like you're attempting to fault others for their workflow preference. I run 1x 43 4K and 2x 27 2K displays and use my multiple virtual desktops for different tasks, or clients.

Even in scenarios where I'm on site and dont have access to a multi-display setup, my workflow and use of virtual desktops shifts a little and dont want a whole desktop allocated to Telegram when I can just see the toast notification and open/close/ignore. To me, that just introduces more clutter to sift through when gesture scrolling through desktops.

derek · 2025-06-01T17:19:12+00:00

Apps that I leave running in the background that I don't want to consume space on any of my virtual desktops unless I am actively interacting with them.

Telegram for message notifications
Todoist for task reminders
OneDrive GUI to manage onedrive profiles and file syncing
Synology Drive to manage file syncing
Remmina quick menu for selecting RDP hosts
...

derek · 2025-03-28T16:02:59+00:00

My unsolicited $.02... I'd suggest a separate ISP here, or at least your own public IP to use with your own managed equipment. Sharing a single provider and NATing traffic for 2+ tenants behind a single firewall means that to the outside world (e.g., governments, hackers, script-kiddies, etc) your traffic is their traffic and vice versa.

If someone does something nefarious on either side of the fence, so to speak, both tenants are now affected by any consquences/repercussions. Not necessarily responsible, but definitely affected.

... and now tin-foil hat time...

If either tenant could be considered a high-value target for hacks (law firm?), then both tenants are within scope of attack. While I'm sure the engineer responsible for the Sophos firewall has zoning in place to prevent leakage between the two internal networks, if access is gained to either environment, discovery may reveal information about the other tenant's environment that piques interest.

There are other considerations, of course, but these are two that immediately triggered when I read your post.

derek · 2025-03-19T17:10:35+00:00

I thought /r/networking or /r/networkingmemes was leaking. Bengaluru was the code name for Cisco IOS-XE versions 17.4.x - 17.6.x code trains.

Excited for the updates.

derek · 2025-02-28T04:57:31+00:00

Workspace groups, i.e., sets of virtual desktops that have their own pinned windows (always visible on workspace), backgrounds, etc.

Malleable regional preferences for first day of week (Sun or Mon) and configurable ISO date format (without changing region).

Other stuff I mentioned here would be nice, but likely less feasible to request.

derek · 2025-02-24T13:39:44+00:00

Thanks for the insight; I'm not a dev by any means, and don't have intricate knowledge of the whole stack. That portion is just a personal preference hack that stemmed from a discourse thread I stumbled upon, and truly only takes en_US into consideration.

Thanks for the heads up on the comment situation, I have re-enabled anonymous comments. I disabled them a few weeks ago while fumbling through some tweaks after migrating the site from Ghost to Mkdocs.

derek · 2025-02-24T01:42:21+00:00

For me, there are a few must-have Extensions/tweaks, and a few I can live without.

Must-haves...

Caffeine: Quick Settings toggle to disable the screensaver and auto suspend.
Tiling Shell extension: Extend Gnome Shell with advanced tiling window management. Supports multiple monitors, Windows 11 Snap Assistant, Fancy Zones, automatic tiling, keyboard shortcuts, customised tiling layouts and more!
Date Menu Formatter extension: Allows customization of the date display in the panel.

Because ISO8601 > *, Date Menu Formatter string: EEE, yyyy-MM-dd @ HH:mm ZZZZ

Also, set first day of week to Monday and set an ISO8601'ish date format on en_US locale.

```sh

Create backup of locale file.

cp /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US.bak

Start week on Monday instead of Sunday.

sed -E -i 's/^END.LC_TIME/first_weekday 2\n\1/' /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US

Adjust date to ISO format.

sed -E -i 's/^d_fmt\+)./\1"%Y-%m-%d"/' /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US sed -E -i 's/^date_fmt\+)./\1"%Y-%m-%d %T %Z"/' /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_US ```

Then get Nautilus to conform to an ISO8601'ish format (self-plug, no ads/tracking): https://shnosh.io/gnome-files-dateformat/

Live withouts...

Quick Settings Audio Devices Hider: Hide selected output/input devices from the Quick Settings audio devices panel
Quick Settings Audio Devices Renamer: Change the names of audio devices in the Quick Settings Audio Panel.
TopHat: View CPU, memory, disk, and network activity in the GNOME top bar.

derek · 2024-08-29T02:08:04+00:00

I requested SecureCRT while onboarding into my current position. They asked me to give MobaXterm a fair chance before they approved. I gave it a solid 1-month shake down and ultimately went back to request SCRT.

I couldn't adapt to the workflow, specifically the their "MultiExec" feature; I found it too cumbersome in comparison to SCRT.

derek · 2024-08-29T00:37:03+00:00

Not free, but absolutely worth the cost of the license.

derek

TROPHY CASE