Re: Hardware Buying Considerations

[Jon Murphy <jcmurphy26@gmail.com>]

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> Please let me know your thoughts or where I am absolutely wrong.


You know I am more than happy to tell you that you are wrong!  ;-)


>From the Doc side…  (sorry I know this is before the Devs weigh in)

All looks good to me except for one item - recommendation

> I am too tired of people buying - often cheap - stuff that simply does not work and they will end up unhappy with. Hopefully we will make the experience better for them and us by getting fewer questions like these.


> I do not want to recommend - at all - any specific hardware here, because that dates very very quickly and still does not work for everyone. What I would rather like to achieve is that everyone is asking themselves the correct questions before they purchase something.


I believe recommendations must happen to help keep users from buying the wrong stuff.  It probably won’t be an exact part number or link to Amazon, but it should be something along the lines of buy this Intel i5 xyz or Intel i7 xyz or AMD xyz.  Buy this network chip and avoid that network chip.

Recommendations can come from users (via thus the IPFire Community or the Wiki) if there is no "official" recommendation.  (In my mind an "official" recommendation would come from Michael or a senior Dev.  And yes I realize this does not/may not really exist today)

Yes, hardware dates quickly, but so does software.  And so does everything else.  I realize the hardware I bought new was discontinued by Intel 7+ years old but it works perfectly for my use-case (home use, internet 200 Mb by 10 Mb, 2-4 users, 3 computers, 15 other devices, less than 1 hour per month VPN in).  To buy my current device I ended up reviewing the pfSense website for suggestions and recommendations.  How crazy is that?!?

Just my 2 cents worth.

Hope everyone is healthy!

Jon



> Message: 2
> Date: Tue, 4 Aug 2020 09:55:04 +0100
> From: Michael Tremer <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org>
> To: "IPFire: Development-List" <development(a)lists.ipfire.org>
> Subject: Hardware Buying Considerations
> Message-ID: <26741AC9-EA07-4684-A864-89745DCC2479(a)ipfire.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset=utf-8
> 
> I have edited the wiki a bit and removed large parts in the hardware section.
> 
> Although this email is about documentation, I would like to have the dev?s opinions first before I pass this page on to the doc team.
> 
> Please read this:
> 
>  https://wiki.ipfire.org/hardware/considerations
> 
> This is an article that should give people some guidance on what to buy. Or rather what not to buy.
> 
> I do not want to recommend - at all - any specific hardware here, because that dates very very quickly and still does not work for everyone. What I would rather like to achieve is that everyone is asking themselves the correct questions before they purchase something.
> 
> I am too tired of people buying - often cheap - stuff that simply does not work and they will end up unhappy with. Hopefully we will make the experience better for them and us by getting fewer questions like these.
> 
> So what I have changed in the content is this:
> 
> * I am no longer recommending to have a HWRNG. I consider them pointless and potentially rather harmful than helpful.
> 
> * I am recommending to think about security first. That means Intel is becoming a difficult buy, but I do not give any solutions either.
> 
> * People really buy oversized machines. I have seen firewalls with 256G of RAM using about 1. What a waste of resources.
> 
> * I assume that accelerated AES is now the default.
> 
> * And finally, I put an emphasis on the network interfaces. It over-simplifies things quite a bit, but I think it is still more important to think about those than having the latest i7 processor.
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts or where I am absolutely wrong.
> 
> Best,
> -Michael