> Um guys, maybe remove devices without wifi support from the “supported devices” list to make the list an actually useful resource?
Open WRT relies on members of the community to help keep the documentation up to date. You can edit the table of hardware here [1].
I wouldn’t say it’s unsupported hardware though. Some people use these devices as a router and don’t need wifi enabled. In this case I would say it is supported, but in limited functionality.
Sounds like the OpenWRT Supported Devices list would be more useful if it was more fine grained.
Compare for example this website which lists support for games running under Proton on Linux: https://www.protondb.com/
The ProtonDB website scores the level of support for each game into one of several different categories, ranging from “borked” (broken) up to platinum and native.
They also include a definition of each type of rating that they use on ProtonDB:
> Platinum: Runs perfectly out of the box
> Gold: Runs perfectly after tweaks
> Silver: Runs with minor issues, but generally is playable
> Bronze: Runs, but often crashes or has issues preventing from playing comfortably
> Borked: Either won't start or is crucially unplayable
I guess features like that depend on developers available time and the size of the communities too. My assumption would be the ProtonDB service would have a much larger audience than OpenWRT does, hence the efforts put into the quality of the data.
Me too. I’ve had three RT-AC68Us for a number of years now - two run stock firmware (one serving DNS and one as an AP) and one runs Merlin (AP).
Unlike stock, the Merlin regularly stays up and stable for months at a time. I just checked the admin interface and last boot was 62 days ago - when we had a power outage.
Couldn’t be happier. There are lots of good reasons not to use consumer routers, but for me these have been an “if it ain’t broke…” situation.
Unfortunately it is not an option if you hope to increase the longevity of your ASUS router. Once ASUS upstream stops supporting your router, so does Marlin. As they did with my AC-66U - which makes sense because they rebase their changes on top of official ASUS firmware.
I wonder, what are the main differences between DD-WRT and Open-WRT ? I'm used to the latter (it's even used in many hardware vanilla operating system), but I never used the former. Is it more suited to some usecases ? Older ?
It's a completely different project. From the user perspective:
- DD-WRT contains a lot of features that are exposed on the UI, but the project is almost dead, with the last stable release being in 2020, but activity died probably a decade ago.
- Open-WRT is very active, but the UI is an afterthought. The feature set is barebones and you need to install plugins for a lot of things - requiring command-line configuration. The Gargoyle project is a more ui-friendly fork, but it's also not really active, and supports a narrow set of routers.
- Besides Merlin, for Broadcom/ASUS, Tomato (and derivative projects) is an alternative, but newer routers are not really supported it seems.
I just checked out Advanced Tomato for a number of routers and the latest update was late 2017. I stopped using Tomato by Shibby for the same reason. Even if the possibility of adding features dried up, I'd have expected some kernel, security, or GUI updates over that time.
Tomato firmware seems to jump to a new project every few years, the version being updated now is called FreshTomato with the latest release being from December 2021.
Appreciate the pointer, kind stranger! I'll have to load this up onto my Asus router that is no longer supported by Merlin. I hate that the stock Asus firmware doesn't let me monitor IP traffic per client. This looks to be supported by FreshTomato.
Perhaps the biggest difference is DD-WRT will accept binary-blob drivers for some SOCs / Wi-Fi chips whereas Open-WRT won't. This is notably problematic for Broadcom powered devices where the result is often that Open-WRT cannot provide 5 Ghz and 2.4 Ghz is sometimes spotty.
I'm having trouble finding any definitive information about it, but a while ago there was some issues with DD-WRT not being fully open source, I forget the specifics. The closest reference I could find just now was the Wikipedia talk page for ddwrt
Came here to say I've had success on a number of now older routers purchased from ebay. I mostly own routers from the AC section here but none from the AX section.
Not all AC routers support DD-WRT / OpenWRT (even similar ones). It's not a problem from Asus though, it's just that some variants are less common and thus a build doesn't exist.
> replace an aging Intel NUC which I have set up as a print server, running CUPS; it frequently stalls in booting up when it gets inadvertently power cycled
Is this that issue where some NUCs won't boot if there is no HDMI display connected? I've heard of people needing to use one of those virtual display dongles to fix this.
I wouldn't do this just bc I've been burned by Asus customer service before. I had a faulty AC68U router (random disconnects; happened regardless of firmware) and they essentially refused to help me. I'd wait 10min on hold to speak to someone and they'd say they can do a repair but no exchange. And when I said I can't be without internet for a week bc I'm WFH, they did absolutely nothing. Never buying Asus again
It's really sad how the custom router firmware scene dried up since the early 2010s. Manufacturers blocking these installs more agressively, with more complicated and vendor-specific quirks most new devices are incompatible, and even if, setup is more problematic. The most common suggestion for custom router firmware is to just set up a dedicated device like a Raspberry for this task, and use dumb WIFI access points and gigabit switches.
ASUS lets you flash whatever you want. The router firmware scene died for the same reason that the Android firmware scene died: manufacturer firmwares stopped sucking so people don't have an incentive to waste their time flashing stuff anymore.
This is pretty far from the truth. A lot of mainstream router firmwares still suck and have gotten worse in many ways, especially the mesh WiFi router scene.
I've soured on the whole xxWRT embedded arm scene. It tends to break, probably due to power sagging during writes or just because it's low-margin consumer hardware that's meant to only last a few years, and then you're stuck digging through device-specific documentation on how to reinstall and reconfigure (or similarly to spec a new device).
My main router is now a Ryzen box run a common Linux distro. For wifi it's got Mikrotik R11e-2HnD (ath9k, 2.4Ghz) and Compex WLE900vx (ath10k, 5Ghz) minipcie cards driven by stock hostapd. Remote APs are lower power embedded amd64 boards that have the same wifi cards and also run Kodi to drive TVs. I'm not super reliant on wifi (wired is always superior for latency), but when the minipcie cards get long in the tooth for standards I'll just replace (or add to) them.
I'm sure the setup is suboptimal in some ways, but it fits right into my existing host configuration scheme and so requires much less attention than tinkering with oddball hardware.
Same here. I ran an rt-66n for years on advanced Tomato until updates stopped.
I moved to OPNSense on a APU2 which is fine for my current connection speed (80/20mbit).
You don't mention the ASUS model. I haven't tried OpenWRT on any Asus device but Merlin has worked on the 56U, 68U and 88 for me.
I wouldn't run OpenWRT on any device not explicitly designed for it, these days. It's just too much trouble. I agree with you that the wiki needs some serious clean up.
I’m using DD-WRT/openWRT but on Netgear routers, I think on Asus routers you simply have to upload the firmware via tftp if the router’s GUI makes it not possible.
Sorry you had trouble with DD-WRT, but there’s a reason they’re so frequently recommended. Plus, unlike the real cheapo routers, Asus isn’t a Chinese company.
ASUS is one or the few descent vendors left from what I can tell, although they never did fix their proprietary mesh on things like Lyra Voice last time I checked.
> Um guys, maybe remove devices without wifi support from the “supported devices” list to make the list an actually useful resource?
Open WRT relies on members of the community to help keep the documentation up to date. You can edit the table of hardware here [1].
I wouldn’t say it’s unsupported hardware though. Some people use these devices as a router and don’t need wifi enabled. In this case I would say it is supported, but in limited functionality.
[1] https://openwrt.org/supported_devices/adding_to_toh#editing_...