Help and support

When all else fails, can you read the manual?

IPFire’s setup wizard is very intuitive, but if you do run into trouble, there’s a simply laid-out wiki, which explains more about the firewall itself, basic setup, the web interface and how to customise your install. We were particularly impressed by the tutorials section, which contains links to YouTube videos giving easy to understand explanations.

Alpine Linux also has an in-depth wiki. It covers installation and a FAQ. There’s also a tutorial section for post-install tasks such as downloading add-ons and creating new user accounts. The cheat sheet Comparison With Other Distros deserves a mention as it lists commands in popular flavours of Linux such as apt update and the equivalent for Alpine (apk update ).

VyOS’s technical documentation is powered by Read the Docs and has a very easy-to-navigate sidebar, which includes installation (including a Quick Start guide), configuration guide and even a dedicated Troubleshooting section.

Endian Firewall has a dedicated support forum (http:// efwsupport.com), which lists categories such as setup and post-install issues. The text is rather small but that’s fixed easily enough, and there’s no need to register to view past posts. There’s also a dedicated reference manual, albeit with similarly minuscule lettering.

ClearOS has an excellent portal linking to its knowledge base, user guides and dedicated forum. Topics include basic install, configuring RAID, post-boot configuration and how to upgrade from the free Community to the paid Home/Business edition. There’s also an good overview of built-in security tools such as the antimalware and antiphishing gateways and content filtering.