alt Hacker News> not having straightforward APIs like BIOS/EFI.
Oh, no, not this again!
> But we generally see that as soon as the manufacturer stops their updates, the community versions start lagging behind as well.
Care to demonstrate that?
The reason OpenWrt abandoned most routers was
1) insufficient flash space in the kernel partition, or insufficient total flash space in no-USB, no-SPI routers,
2) unwillingness to repartition flash because it breaks compatibility with official firmware (as if anyone installing OpenWrt would care),
3) insufficient RAM to run newer kernels
and, most importantly,
4) unwillingness to support older kernels like DD-WRT does.
> Oh, no, not this again!
What are you referring to? Would you not say there is a difference between OpenWRT having to make a list of supported whole systems, whereas an amd64 Linux distribution making a list of chipsets? I can go buy an off the shelf laptop, stick a generic "Linux install" USB in it, and be reasonably certain most things are going to work. Whereas OpenWrt I have to look at their list of supported machines, and buy exactly that one, even down to the hardware rev. Some of this is due to embedded constraints, but a good chunk is also due to the lack of hardware discoverability.
>> community distributions that dubiously remix manufacturer-supplied binaries are available
> The reason OpenWrt abandoned most routers was
I didn't mean things like OpenWrt, which I'd say is a general Linux distribution that does contortions to fit on specific devices. Rather I was talking about things like Valetudo which are closer to rooting the stock distribution with some tweaks, or the countless "custom ROMs" you see (saw?) in the phone world which are effectively remixing the manufacturer images. I thought DD-WRT was in that camp, especially for many devices (eg where do these "older kernels" come from?), but I'm hazy on that.
(personally I gave on up OpenWrt some 10 years back, and just use generic Linux (NixOS) on amd64. A VM on my server for the router, and lower-power amd64 boards for the additional APs (most of which double as Kodi terminals))