alt Hacker NewsHow about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice, and passing messy wireless to separate AP?
OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy. There is a zoo of images for different hardware, installation options and tools. It has to run on small devices, so there are limitations. The documentation on Wiki is scattered and could be improved.
I had to search forums for weeks for a custom package installation for my router. Right now I have been trying to upgrade to the latest version via LUCI for a while, and it stucks. Probably have to wait for few weeks, go through CLI and maybe search forums again.
I just thought I am paying a hefty time price for a bit more expensive x86 mini pc and AP.
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>OpenWRT is very good, but the installation and upgrades are not easy.
The solution is to use image-builder and bake your config into the image.
> How about OPNSense on open hardware of your choice
Yes, it's a possibility, but if you want to tinker, I think a plain Linux distro like Debian is better. Turning it into a router is literally a couple of kernel parameters and a few iptables rules to set up NAT. Nowadays that's less than fives minutes of work with Claude.
This buys you much better performance and hardware compatibility relative to a BSD system, as well as lower resource usage and attack surface (no GUI or other unnecessary additions). WiFi support on BSD is bad, but on Linux you can use hostapd and almost immediately get an access point for free. And of course Linux is also better if you intend to run other stuff on the same hardware.
Upgrades are “owut upgrade” these days. Pretty straightforward.
You're right, it's interesting that this device isn't the most technically superior in hardware or software, and isn't the most casual user friendly. It seems to be targeting a segment I can't bucket other than loyalists. Maybe good hardware & software for the cost?
I agree on the upgrade story, though supposedly the recent move to apk will help in that regard.
I moved from pfSense to OpenWRT due to the really poor IPv6 support in pfSense. I don't use the AP capability either. How are things in OPNSense these days?
Particular pain points from pfSense was that it published global IP as DNS address to LAN clients and no way around it, so connectivity broke every time prefix changed, and no real support for specifying prefix-less firewall rules or similar, so couldn't really expose anything via IPv6 without pain.
Your OpenWrt ecosystem knowledge seems oudated; upgrades are a solved problem since the advent of "Attended Sysupgrade": https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/installation/attended.sy...
It's been included in all suitable default image configurations starting with OpenWrt release 25.12.
I do run OpenWrt on my x86-based router, on my AP, and even on my managed switches, and have no regrets.