I’d recommend OPNsense over PFsense due to multiple shady moves by netgate (the parent company of pfsense), including moving to closed-source:
- pfsense is falsely open-source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26476030
- pfsense botched/rushed their wireguard implementation: https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/migration-from-pfsense-to-opnsense-drama-about-wireguard/12798
- pfsense squatted on competitor domain and used underhanded/defamatory practices: https://opnsense.org/opnsense-com/
If you don’t mind the drama, both PFsense and OPNsense are perfectly competent router OSes.
Regarding hardware:
- OPNsense also sells rack-mountable server hosts.
- OP may not actually need a rack-mounted server – I have several machines just sitting on a 2u rack-mounted shelf. My opnsense install runs on a cheap protectli box, and there’s enough room for a handful of raspberry pis and their power bricks on the shelf next to it.
It’s not just every tech company, it’s every company. And it’s terrifying - it’s like giving people who don’t know how to ride a bike a 1000hp motorcycle! The industry does not have guardrails in place and the public consciousness “chatGPT can do it” without any thought to checking the output is horrifying.