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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 n

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 ?

poisonborz 5y ago
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.
- MegaDeKay 5y ago
  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.
  - starky 5y ago
    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.
    - MegaDeKay 5y ago
      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.
nbutyllithium 5y ago
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.
dec0dedab0de 5y ago
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

poisonborz 5y ago

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.

MegaDeKay 5y ago
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.
- starky 5y ago
  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.
  - MegaDeKay 5y ago
    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.

nbutyllithium 5y ago

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.

dec0dedab0de 5y ago

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