I'm curious how well AP mode works for usb cards these days. After a bunch of years with Openwrt (mostly on a bunch of netgear wgt634u's), I was pretty gung ho

I'm curious how well AP mode works for usb cards these days. After a bunch of years with Openwrt (mostly on a bunch of netgear wgt634u's), I was pretty gung ho about trying to switch off router hardware and to more generic-computer + wifi for wireless infrastrcuture. Ideally if I could via usb cards, as those were so easy to add to even small systems like the early rpis or cheap chromeboxes. But after buying one or two of every Alfa usb cards out there with all the different chipsets, I found each chipset would have some horrible blocker. Some examples, iirc (it's been a while): Realtek-based AWUS036H would work some then die & throw a bunch of kernel messages. Atheros-based AWUS036NHA was working great, but was limited to ~8 clients. I keep hoping someday the RPI can make an actual respectable decent AP, without needing to go for a pcie carrier board (and frankly, it seems like there's not good availability for AP grade PCIe cards either... everything seems to be rebadged Compex cards, usually at astronomical prices). I keep hoping wireless can be more DIYable in general. The Morrownr/usb-wifi repo has been such a godsend. There's just been no stable repository of knowledge for so long. But I haven't dared wade back in, & figure out how I'm going to be disappointed this time around.