That's how I've got mine set up, with OPNsense.
I've been using it a few years and I only know about half the stuff that pfSense/OPNsense can do. So I would advise newbies to just make small changes at a time because there's a whole lot of stuff you can change. It's worth learning, though. I wouldn't use anything else for my main firewall/router nowadays.
How would the update affect stuff like a GoCryptFS volume which I mount and use periodically but not all the time? Would those files be processed much faster than previously?