I have many nerdy friends who have been Linux users for ages. But most of them don’t know such a thing as Openwrt exists or have never bothered to give it a try. It’s a very fun piece of software to play with and can be extremely useful for routing traffic. Wondering why it isn’t more popular/widely used.

  • RandoCalrandian
    0•3 months ago

    In my experience it’s because it’s finicky as fuck and requires very specific (and often more expensive) router models, and even then it still crashes just as much as a proprietary os router.

    • mFatOPEnglish
      2•3 months ago

      You can run it on a raspberry pi or an x86 mini pc.

      • RandoCalrandian
        3•3 months ago

        sure, and then you have to make sure you get the correct radio accessories, as the built in pi wifi isn’t going to do so hot acting as the hotspot for multiple video streaming devices.

        Radios which you also have to vet against the approved hardware list for OpenWRT, and having multiple channels is even more of an issue with the lack of USB ports (depending on model)

        • mFatOPEnglish
          2•3 months ago

          Best thing to do is to get a fanless mini PC with multiple ethernet ports and hook up a decent access point to one of those ports.

          • AggressivelyPassive
            2•3 months ago

            Then you’re still looking at a mess of devices and a relatively power hungry system plus you still have your ISPs modem

            I need my Internet for work, so I just replaced my ISPs modem with a FritzBox, which is not ideal, but serves me well, gets updates for quite a while and works pretty much always.

              • AggressivelyPassive
                1•3 months ago

                Or, I keep using my Fritzbox, which is a single device and does everything I want.

                As far as I know, there is no cable modem/router integrated device.

                • @umbrella@lemmy.ml
                  1•3 months ago

                  the option i suggested is also a single device.

                  most commercial routers can run openwrt. you dont need a specialized device.

                  • AggressivelyPassive
                    1•3 months ago

                    I still need a cable modem. And as far as I know, none of the ones that can be used with my provider support any other OS.

    • Possibly linuxEnglish
      2•3 months ago

      You can run it on used hardware from the landfill. As long as it has more than 32mb of ram and no broadcom you are good.

      You can find old hardware for free if you go dumpster diving. If that isn’t an option you can pickup a device for $100 USD