alt Hacker NewsAre there any preconfigured images/installers available for a major Linux distro to turn them a router with safe and sensible defaults?
I know there is OpenWrt, but my experience is that is more geared toward running on embedded wifi hardware than an x86 machine. The x86 install comes with a tiny root partition that's actually pretty difficult to resize, for example, and upgrades are quite brittle compared to standard Linux distros.
And there's also pfSense and OPNsense, but these run on FreeBSD which seems to lag behind Linux for hardware support. There's no support for the Aquantia AQC113 NIC, for example (although it looks like this may finally have been added in the last month or so).
Something like an Ubuntu Appliance [1] would be quite nice.
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FreeBSD probably supports the hardware you have. If not, just buy the hardware that supports FreeBSD.
Modified Ubuntu LTS server image will work, and a minimal Debian kernel will have far less bloat. Note pfSense/FreeBSD is fairly robust, and a mature project.
Keep in mind most network appliances have dedicated hardware hand-off adapters, and so the CPU isn't involved in routing once the connection is setup. It is why people can use a $30 SoC, and still be able to saturate several 10Gb/100Gb ports. =3
The best is likely Vyos. It acts quite similarly to routers from the likes of Arista/Cisco/Juniper.
https://vyos.io/