Substantial Update to IPFire Now Available

If you're a user of IPFire, get ready for a major update in IPFire 2.29 – Core Update 203, because the developers have replaced Unbound with Knot Resolver for handling DNS for a more flexible foundation and new capabilities, such as a DNS firewall and encrypted upstream forwarding.

"This is a significant change under the hood, and not one we made lightly," the official IPFire blog states. "Unbound has served IPFire well for many years and remains an excellent resolver. But DNS has quietly become one of the most important parts of the modern network. It is no longer only about turning names into addresses – it increasingly carries the information other protocols rely on to connect quickly, securely and privately, from encrypted transport to the records clients use to establish encrypted connections."

With Knot Resolver, you also get encrypted zone data (over TLS), SafeSearch, conditional forwarding, local overrides, and DHCP integration. Besides Knot Resolver, IPFire 2.29 also includes persistent cache (for surviving restarts), shared state across multiple workers (sharing one cache and state for more efficient use of multi-CPU core systems without cache fragmentation), and WiFi 6 support (for cleaner airtime and more stable connections, wider channels, and no radar detection).

Of course, there are the usual bug fixes and several smaller improvements. You can find out all about the new release in the blog post linked above and download IPFire 2.29 from the official IPFire download page.