The Book of PF, 4th edition

Cue the confetti: the 4th edition of Peter Hansteen’s “The Book of PF” just dropped in Early Access, and the BSD crowd is treating it like a hometown parade. PF (that’s “Packet Filter,” aka the firewall brain in OpenBSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD) gets a modern refresh—think IPv6 (the new internet addressing), dual-stack setups, smarter traffic shaping to keep video calls smooth, spam defense, backups that kick in automatically, and better logging. But the comments? Pure popcorn. dhruv3006 opens with publisher love—No Starch Press is the rock star—and the thread quickly pivots to a showdown. gspr asks for a similarly modern book for Linux’s nftables (the newer firewall system), noting the old 2008 iptables era feels like flip phones. Then iyn drops the spicy line: “not to start a holy war,” but PF vs nftables—who wins? The room splits: BSD vets keep praising PF’s clean rules and reliability, while Linux folks want a current bible of their own. For comic relief, skywal_l chirps “PF = Packet Filter,” prompting jokes that PF now stands for “People Fighting.” One old-school pro reminisces that the book “helped me a lot professionally,” before confessing they ditched paper for minimalist digital life—cue the print vs PDF debate. Need the deep cut? Check Hansteen’s PF tutorial and his blog for nerd fuel.