You have really piqued my interest. I have always thought about running my DIY Router + Firewall + switch but had never really spoken to anyone who had done it before (guides on the internet notwithstanding).

However, if I do something like this, it will likely be on OpenBSD. Now, I haven’t delved deep enough into the BSDs to know if it’s better than Debian since all distributions can be made as secure as we want. However, OpenBSD just has a better image in my mind in terms of security and some of their choices in the OS are to my liking.