IPFire is a linux-distribution that focusses on easy setup, good handling and a high niveau of security.

IPFire is a linux-distribution that focusses on easy setup, good handling and a high niveau of security.

It is operable via an intuitive webinterface, which offers a lot of playground for beginners and even experienced administrators. IPFire is maintained by experienced developers, who are really concerned about security and regulary updates to keep it secure.

IPFire ships with a custom built paket-manager called Pakfire, so the system can be expanded with various addons.

The modular design enables the user to create a tailor-made System fitting his needs. This can either be a very small system, which can be run on old hardware like a first-generation Intel Pentium, or a SOHO-System with an up-to-date multiprocessor.

The required computer performance therefore depends on the scope of application.
At least a 333 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM and two network interfaces - one for the internet connection and for the LAN - are required to run IPFire.

IPFire caters to users not overly familiar with networking and server services. IPFire ships with an extensive package management utility (Pakfire) which allows the base system to be extended by various addons. The package manager also enables updates to address security issues.

The base system provides following features:

* Proxy server with content filter and caching-functionality for updates (i.e. Microsoft Windows Updates and Anti-Virus)
* Intrusion detection system (Snort) with intrusion prevention-addon "guardian"
* VPN via IPsec and OpenVPN
* DHCP-server
* Caching-nameserver
* Time server
* Wake-on-LAN (WOL)
* Dynamic DNS
* Quality of Service
* Outgoing firewall
* System monitoring and Log-Analysis
IPFire offers add-ons which are maintained by the development team.

Some available Addons:

* File- and Print server (Samba and CUPS, vsftpd)
* Asterisk and Teamspeak
* Video Disk Recorder (VDR)
* Mail server - postfix, Spamassassin, Clamav, Amavisd-new
* Streaming server (MPD a.o.)

Updates (via Distrowatch):

Arne Fitzenreiter has announced the release of IPFire 2.9 Core 49, a Linux-based firewall distribution: "Today we are going to release Core Update 49. IPFire 2.9 Core 49 is a bug-fix release and brings minor feature updates. List of changes: QoS - replaced sip with rtp for VoIP; Apache - tuning maximum spare servers to 10; add 'charon' to IPSec log section; fix ID information on IPSec configuration; backup.cgi - added content length to show file status bar; add CGI to display the md-state; services.cgi - blacklist mdadm (no good idea to stop it); extrahd -add mmcblk card reader and mdadm support; extrahd - display also non-partitioned disks; add initskript to wait until slower drives are present; changed OpenVPN CGI to create a CN without a blank; change Squid init script to kill remaining ClamAV redir; lm_sensors - update to 3.3.0...."

Here is the full release announcement. Download (SHA1): ipfire-2.9.i586-full-core49.iso torrent). (67.5MB,

Recent releases:

• 2011-06-13: Distribution Release: IPFire 2.9 Core 49
• 2011-03-08: Distribution Release: IPFire 2.9 Core 47
• 2011-02-02: Distribution Release: IPFire 2.9 Core 45
• 2011-01-16: Distribution Release: IPFire 2.9
• 2010-11-10: Distribution Release: IPFire 2.7 Core 41
• 2010-09-17: Distribution Release: IPFire 2.7 Core 40

Screenshots.