{"slug": "pf", "name": "pf", "category": "networking", "category_name": "Networking and VPN", "description": "", "recommenders": 4, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 3.861, "rising": 1.35, "first": "2025-11-02", "latest": "2026-10-20", "why": "", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 4, "neutral": 1, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["pf", "PF"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802658289, "item_id": 50166143, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166143", "by": "deltarholamda", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pf is top tier", "excerpt": ">`man` pages are consistently incredible I love this part of OpenBSD so much. FreeBSD is very good as well on this front. Sometimes the terseness of the man pages gets to me, but it's all there. I used OpenBSD as a daily driver way back, somewhere around v3.5, on a somewhat elderly Thinkpad. It was perfectly adequate. I still use it for various systems that I pretty much just set and forget. Extremely reliable, and p", "context": "", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 802616177, "item_id": 50163511, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163511", "by": "ctolsen", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "`pf` makes so much sense.", "excerpt": "I've used OpenBSD the last year or so (as a bastion/jump host for a few systems) after using *BSD systems very little for probably the past decade, and... good lord I love it so much. Say what you want about the benefits of systemd or the usefulness of other parts of what is now unavoidable with Linux, and I won't argue with many of them, but OpenBSD just feels like a *nix system is supposed to. `ps aux` is like 10 e", "context": "", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 747288624, "item_id": 46705539, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705539", "by": "Fnoord", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've always preferred PF to IPT.", "excerpt": "I used to run KDE and GNOME on a computer with 256 MB RAM back around the year 2000. Athlon 1000 Sempron and a Duron 800 (one of these machines started out with 128 MB RAM). KDE 1.x, 2.x, GNOME 1.x, 2.x. I don't remember the very minor versions. I tried a myriad of Linux distributions, and FreeBSD as well. I settled for Debian. Back then, we (me, friends, family, etc.) thought these DE's were very bloated. I remember", "context": "", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop"}, {"id": 734485169, "item_id": 45905323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905323", "by": "clan", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand!", "excerpt": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE. It is not as smooth as Linux and requires a little more tinkering compared to Linux. But I love it! The killer features for me: - The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand! - Jails! When you cannot have Zones this will do. - Native ZFS. Stable, mature, safe and with all the features you can dream of. - Linuxulator. Binary compatibility with Linux if need be. Can be p", "context": "daily drives FreeBSD", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief look at FreeBSD"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "clan", "context": "daily drives FreeBSD", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905323", "date": "2025-11-12"}, {"by": "Lammy", "context": "has used PF since 2011 for a home router", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45794391", "date": "2025-11-02"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["firewall", "home router firewall"], "compared": [{"slug": "freebsd", "name": "FreeBSD", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "linux", "name": "Linux", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "openbsd", "name": "OpenBSD", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160494", "title": "OpenBSD 8.0", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46665987", "title": "200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45899189", "title": "A brief look at FreeBSD", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45789424", "title": "Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 2}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802658289, "item_id": 50166143, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50166143", "by": "deltarholamda", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pf is top tier", "excerpt": ">`man` pages are consistently incredible I love this part of OpenBSD so much. FreeBSD is very good as well on this front. Sometimes the terseness of the man pages gets to me, but it's all there. I used OpenBSD as a daily driver way back, somewhere around v3.5, on a somewhat elderly Thinkpad. It was perfectly adequate. I still use it for various systems that I pretty much just set and forget. Extremely reliable, and p", "context": "", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 802616177, "item_id": 50163511, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163511", "by": "ctolsen", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "`pf` makes so much sense.", "excerpt": "I've used OpenBSD the last year or so (as a bastion/jump host for a few systems) after using *BSD systems very little for probably the past decade, and... good lord I love it so much. Say what you want about the benefits of systemd or the usefulness of other parts of what is now unavoidable with Linux, and I won't argue with many of them, but OpenBSD just feels like a *nix system is supposed to. `ps aux` is like 10 e", "context": "", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 747288624, "item_id": 46705539, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46705539", "by": "Fnoord", "date": "2026-01-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've always preferred PF to IPT.", "excerpt": "I used to run KDE and GNOME on a computer with 256 MB RAM back around the year 2000. Athlon 1000 Sempron and a Duron 800 (one of these machines started out with 128 MB RAM). KDE 1.x, 2.x, GNOME 1.x, 2.x. I don't remember the very minor versions. I tried a myriad of Linux distributions, and FreeBSD as well. I settled for Debian. Back then, we (me, friends, family, etc.) thought these DE's were very bloated. I remember", "context": "", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "200 MB RAM FreeBSD Desktop"}, {"id": 734485169, "item_id": 45905323, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45905323", "by": "clan", "date": "2025-11-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand!", "excerpt": "I daily drive FreeBSD on my desktop with KDE. It is not as smooth as Linux and requires a little more tinkering compared to Linux. But I love it! The killer features for me: - The pf firewall. Rules you actually understand! - Jails! When you cannot have Zones this will do. - Native ZFS. Stable, mature, safe and with all the features you can dream of. - Linuxulator. Binary compatibility with Linux if need be. Can be p", "context": "daily drives FreeBSD", "use_case": "firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "A brief look at FreeBSD"}, {"id": 732710256, "item_id": 45794391, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45794391", "by": "Lammy", "date": "2025-11-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Once I did it became much more straightforward to express in my `pf.conf` what I want to do", "excerpt": "> - firewall? [\u2026] Wherever I looked, people said \"it's complicated.\" After a lot of tinkering and learning I finally got a setup that was pretty safe. (I think.) I felt this way about pf when I first got PF going around 2011 for my home router/firewall box. Not saying this is the same for you or anyone else, but my issue was that I was approaching it from the point of view of \u201cI want to configure a home firewall rout", "context": "has used PF since 2011 for a home router", "use_case": "home router firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "Using FreeBSD to make self-hosting fun again"}]}