{"slug": "vyos", "name": "VyOS", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 6, "warners": 1, "score": 1.956, "rising": -0.98, "first": "2025-11-24", "latest": "2026-07-19", "why": "", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1, "compare": 2, "warn": 1}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "vyos.io", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://vyos.io/", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["VyOS"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 762219136, "item_id": 47638696, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47638696", "by": "erinnh", "date": "2026-04-04", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The best is likely Vyos.", "excerpt": "The best is likely Vyos. It acts quite similarly to routers from the likes of Arista/Cisco/Juniper. https://vyos.io/", "context": "", "use_case": "Linux router", "switched_from": "", "story": "What changes when you turn a Linux box into a router"}, {"id": 760110498, "item_id": 47506906, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47506906", "by": "yabones", "date": "2026-03-24", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "perhaps this will be VyOS's time to shine", "excerpt": "Even easier, just throw together some iptables rules & install dnsmasq. Obviously out of reach of most non-techy people but it's not much worse than most self-hosted things people build. I've even done it with USB-Ethernet dongles. Maybe \"whitebox\" stuff will have a moment here. Buy a ARM based \"computer\" that just happens to have a built in switch and 802.11 radio, and separately purchase an SD card with the OS on i", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "FCC Updates Covered List to Include Foreign-Made Consumer Routers"}, {"id": 738548496, "item_id": 46159281, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46159281", "by": "sschueller", "date": "2025-12-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the update procedure which was very simple", "excerpt": "I just did the update to 2025-Q2 (I use the quarterly stream build). Initially I thought this is going to be a huge pain. I have many interfaces and also pass-through hardware like the SFP28 card. I made a copy of my primary router vm and added fake interfaces with the same MAC addresses. I then went through the update procedure which was very simple. in vyos vm: wget https://community-downloads.vyos.dev/stream/1.5-s", "context": "", "use_case": "Virtual router/firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "UniFi 5G"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 783593328, "item_id": 48974583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48974583", "by": "davkan", "date": "2026-07-19", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "after their repeated hostility towards non paying users I moved to mikrotik for my routers", "excerpt": "How are you managing updates? I absolutely loved vyos but after their repeated hostility towards non paying users I moved to mikrotik for my routers (already had mikrotik switches). First they stopped publishing LTS images, telling users to build from source. So people built gh repos you could clone and build with actions. Then they stopped making lts builds reproducible and told free users to use the preview release", "context": "home router user", "use_case": "home router", "switched_from": "", "story": "HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router"}]}], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["home router", "linux router", "virtual router/firewall", "router wan failover"], "compared": [{"slug": "mikrotik", "name": "MikroTik", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "openwrt", "name": "OpenWrt", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47495344", "title": "FCC Updates Covered List to Include Foreign-Made Consumer Routers", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46157594", "title": "UniFi 5G", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48970772", "title": "HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586885", "title": "What changes when you turn a Linux box into a router", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46037556", "title": "Is your Android TV streaming box part of a botnet?", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"compare": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"warn": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {}}, "versions": [], "version_unnamed": 0, "family_ref": null, "runs_on": null, "lines": [], "quotes": [{"id": 783593328, "item_id": 48974583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48974583", "by": "davkan", "date": "2026-07-19", "version": null, "stance": "warn", "quote": "after their repeated hostility towards non paying users I moved to mikrotik for my routers", "excerpt": "How are you managing updates? I absolutely loved vyos but after their repeated hostility towards non paying users I moved to mikrotik for my routers (already had mikrotik switches). First they stopped publishing LTS images, telling users to build from source. So people built gh repos you could clone and build with actions. Then they stopped making lts builds reproducible and told free users to use the preview release", "context": "home router user", "use_case": "home router", "switched_from": "", "story": "HomeLab #1: MikroTik as a Home Router"}, {"id": 762219136, "item_id": 47638696, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47638696", "by": "erinnh", "date": "2026-04-04", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The best is likely Vyos.", "excerpt": "The best is likely Vyos. It acts quite similarly to routers from the likes of Arista/Cisco/Juniper. https://vyos.io/", "context": "", "use_case": "Linux router", "switched_from": "", "story": "What changes when you turn a Linux box into a router"}, {"id": 760111683, "item_id": 47506980, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47506980", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-03-24", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "but it never seemed sufficiently better than my NixOS thing", "excerpt": "The easiest one I've set up was ClearOS. I was happy enough with OpnSense but when I upgraded a network card I had issues with driver compatibility because of the FreeBSD core. ClearOS being Linux it worked out of the box, and getting ClearOS set up seriously only took me like fifteen minutes. I was shocked. I love my NixOS thing, because I am part of the cult of NixOS, but it's probably something I wouldn't recommen", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "FCC Updates Covered List to Include Foreign-Made Consumer Routers"}, {"id": 760110498, "item_id": 47506906, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47506906", "by": "yabones", "date": "2026-03-24", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "perhaps this will be VyOS's time to shine", "excerpt": "Even easier, just throw together some iptables rules & install dnsmasq. Obviously out of reach of most non-techy people but it's not much worse than most self-hosted things people build. I've even done it with USB-Ethernet dongles. Maybe \"whitebox\" stuff will have a moment here. Buy a ARM based \"computer\" that just happens to have a built in switch and 802.11 radio, and separately purchase an SD card with the OS on i", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "FCC Updates Covered List to Include Foreign-Made Consumer Routers"}, {"id": 738548496, "item_id": 46159281, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46159281", "by": "sschueller", "date": "2025-12-05", "version": null, "stance": "recommend", "quote": "the update procedure which was very simple", "excerpt": "I just did the update to 2025-Q2 (I use the quarterly stream build). Initially I thought this is going to be a huge pain. I have many interfaces and also pass-through hardware like the SFP28 card. I made a copy of my primary router vm and added fake interfaces with the same MAC addresses. I then went through the update procedure which was very simple. in vyos vm: wget https://community-downloads.vyos.dev/stream/1.5-s", "context": "", "use_case": "Virtual router/firewall", "switched_from": "", "story": "UniFi 5G"}, {"id": 738539008, "item_id": 46158688, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46158688", "by": "sschueller", "date": "2025-12-05", "version": null, "stance": "neutral", "quote": "using Vyos[2]", "excerpt": "I have a wireless backup[1] using Vyos[2] and a 5G router provided for free by the 5G service provider for those rare moments when both fiber links are dead. At the same time I would never recommend anyone get 5G internet as their primary service if you have other options and especially not from one of these cheap providers. [1] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-fiber/ [2] https://sschueller.githu", "context": "", "use_case": "Router WAN failover", "switched_from": "", "story": "UniFi 5G"}, {"id": 736610896, "item_id": 46038181, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46038181", "by": "sekh60", "date": "2025-11-24", "version": null, "stance": "compare", "quote": "I use vyos instead of OpenWRT", "excerpt": "I use vyos instead of OpenWRT, but I'd presume OpenWRT can mirror a port? It'd be better to do it on your switch of course. But you could mirror your traffic going across the LAN-WAN barrier and direct it to a security onion install, it's an opensource IDS. It has pretty heavy demands, but traffic analysis is not an easy, computationally cheap task.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Is your Android TV streaming box part of a botnet?"}]}