[slacka]

I experienced this back when I configured my home Linux boxes as a router, VPN server, firewall, media server, etc. Since I had the time, compiled all of the info I found on random blogs and sites and added them to the Ubuntu Community wiki. That was the 12.x days, when Ubuntu was in its prime and the distro to use.

While these blogs were a great resource, I often found the commands outdated or applied to a different distro. A distro specific wiki solves both those issue. While I don't get the glory of a blog, I just checked an it's nice to see my notes still there for future Denvercoder9's.

[bombcar]

The Gentoo Wiki was a great resource for many networking questions, even when I wasn't using Gentoo.

A major hurdle is simply learning how to describe what you want to do "in the industry terms" - "I can't access my server from my computer but it works from the Internet" is a lot easier to resolve when you learn what "hairpin NAT" is.

[wmf]

Searching for things when you don't know the terminology seems like an ideal use for AIs.

[gerdesj]

Ahhh, it sounds like you've only done this once. I started off with ipfw, then ipchains, then iptables and now whatever firewalld supports. OK that's roughly 25 years so not too much firewalling churn! I stopped hand rolling my own rule sets with ipchains and switched to generators and there are loads of them.

For me some of the problems nowadays are caused by search engine manipulation. Up until around five or so years ago Linux concept searches would get you pointed at the usual big hitters - Arch/Gentoo/Ubuntu/etc wikis and useful and quite well known blogs. My modern block list for ublacklist is huge and barely scratches the surface.

Now I come to think of it, we now have ChatGPT and I bet it can roll a decent ruleset without hallucinating madly. No doubt someone will soon be Showing HN: their smart new firewall prompt generator language for <insert AI here>. It will make the LLM use Rust as an intermediary for extra safety.

[cyberax]

This is one reason Mikrotik products are so nice. At least, they have a pretty decent Web UI that you can use to configure stuff.

[pnutjam]

OpenSuse has Yast, which is simpler in my experience.