From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jon Murphy To: development@lists.ipfire.org Subject: Re: Hardware Buying Considerations Date: Tue, 04 Aug 2020 17:17:28 -0500 Message-ID: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============2541915618774750705==" List-Id: --===============2541915618774750705== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > 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=E2=80=A6 (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 t= hat dates very very quickly and still does not work for everyone. What I woul= d rather like to achieve is that everyone is asking themselves the correct qu= estions before they purchase something. I believe recommendations must happen to help keep users from buying the wron= g stuff. It probably won=E2=80=99t be an exact part number or link to Amazon= , but it should be something along the lines of buy this Intel i5 xyz or Inte= l 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 Wik= i) if there is no "official" recommendation. (In my mind an "official" recom= mendation would come from Michael or a senior Dev. And yes I realize this do= es not/may not really exist today) Yes, hardware dates quickly, but so does software. And so does everything el= se. I realize the hardware I bought new was discontinued by Intel 7+ years o= ld 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 sug= gestions 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 > To: "IPFire: Development-List" > Subject: Hardware Buying Considerations > Message-ID: <26741AC9-EA07-4684-A864-89745DCC2479(a)ipfire.org> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=3Dutf-8 >=20 > I have edited the wiki a bit and removed large parts in the hardware sectio= n. >=20 > 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. >=20 > Please read this: >=20 > https://wiki.ipfire.org/hardware/considerations >=20 > This is an article that should give people some guidance on what to buy. Or= rather what not to buy. >=20 > I do not want to recommend - at all - any specific hardware here, because t= hat dates very very quickly and still does not work for everyone. What I woul= d rather like to achieve is that everyone is asking themselves the correct qu= estions before they purchase something. >=20 > 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. >=20 > So what I have changed in the content is this: >=20 > * I am no longer recommending to have a HWRNG. I consider them pointless an= d potentially rather harmful than helpful. >=20 > * I am recommending to think about security first. That means Intel is beco= ming a difficult buy, but I do not give any solutions either. >=20 > * People really buy oversized machines. I have seen firewalls with 256G of = RAM using about 1. What a waste of resources. >=20 > * I assume that accelerated AES is now the default. >=20 > * And finally, I put an emphasis on the network interfaces. It over-simplif= ies things quite a bit, but I think it is still more important to think about= those than having the latest i7 processor. >=20 > Please let me know your thoughts or where I am absolutely wrong. >=20 > Best, > -Michael --===============2541915618774750705==--