7 ms·

OpenWrt went crazy in the last few years. OpenWrt (the OS) is a mess: - bugs are ignored, - bug fixes ignored, - improvements to core OpenWrt are ignored (al

by M95D 2y ago

OpenWrt went crazy in the last few years. OpenWrt (the OS) is a mess: - bugs are ignored, - bug fixes ignored, - improvements to core OpenWrt are ignored (although package PRs are still accepted somehow), - almost no new documentation, - no reply for documentation clarifications on the forum, - significant parts of OpenWrt are not accessible for PRs or bug reports: fstools, procd, ubus, etc. - no improvements to critical routing features, such as hardware acceleration, - routers abandoned left and right (kernel no longer fits in the factory partition) and absolutely no support for older kernels, But now they have video acceleration, mesa, X, wayland, Doom, etc. With OpenWrt Two, I bet they're going to make the same mistakes as OpenWrt One: not enough memory and not upgradable, wifi not replaceable, no usable expansion slots (mini-PCI, M.2) and, of course, no (e)SATA. Another e-waste product that will be obsolete even before it's available to buy. I wish they got back to routing.

wtallis 2y ago
> With OpenWrt Two, I bet they're going to make the same mistakes as OpenWrt One: not enough memory and not upgradable, wifi not replaceable, no usable expansion slots (mini-PCI, M.2) and, of course, no (e)SATA. Another e-waste product that will be obsolete even before it's available to buy. Those are only mistakes if you ignore the realities of what hardware is available. A highly-integrated SoC designed specifically for wireless router usage is a more cost-effective platform than a generic x86 PC. Basing OpenWRT One and Two on such hardware means work to improve support for those systems is more likely to benefit OpenWRT support for mainstream consumer networking equipment that also uses purpose-built SoCs. OpenWRT is not yet in a position to influence the hardware design decisions made by companies like Mediatek, Qualcomm, Broadcom for their consumer WiFi product families. Those chips are still designed around what's best for the big brands that are the primary customers: Netgear, Linksys, TP-Link, etc. Adding SATA controllers to a WiFi router SoC does not benefit Netgear, et al., nor does splitting out all the radios to separate chips that could be installed onto M.2 cards (miniPCI and miniPCIe being long obsolete and bandwidth-starved). Asking for eSATA is laughably unrealistic. A focus on the kind of modular, expandable and upgradable hardware platforms that actually currently exist (namely, PCs) is what leads to the distractions you're complaining about: "video acceleration, mesa, X, wayland, Doom, etc."
- teleforce 2y ago
  For another approach to open source networking by Linux Foundation please check DENT OS [1]. > OpenWRT is not yet in a position to influence the hardware design decisions made by companies like Mediatek, Qualcomm, Broadcom for their consumer WiFi product families. Perhaps I'm biased, but I do believe DENT is in much better position and has more chance of influencing the white-box networking vendor than OpenWRT with regards to their design decisions. From the website: "As a Linux Foundation project, DENT utilizes the Linux Kernel, Switchdev, and other Linux based projects as the basis for building a new standardized network operating system without abstractions or overhead. All underlying infrastructure — including ASIC and Silicon for networking and datapath — is treated equally; while existing abstractions, APIs, drivers, low-level overhead, and other open software are simplified. DENT unites silicon vendors, ODMs, SIs, OEMs, and end users across all verticals to enable the transition to disaggregated networks." [1] DENT: https://dent.dev/ https://dent.dev/
  - wtallis 2y ago
    That doesn't even appear to be attempting to address anything relevant to consumer networking. It's a purely enterprise-focused project, mostly about putting a Debian-based OS onto rackmount ethernet switches.
    - teleforce 2y ago
      >That doesn't even appear to be attempting to address anything relevant to consumer networking Don't be too pessimistic, anything that can contribute to the disaggregation of networking technology will be good for the consumer markets since the companies producing these networking SoC namely Qualcomm, Mediatek, etc should care about their downstream revenues. By adopting the open eco-system champion by SONiC and DENT for networking technology disaggregation, it will definitely spill over to the consumer networking as well since these are the very same companies that design and manufacture the networking pervasive consumer networking SoC. There are too many and numerous examples of Linux enterprise features that are spilling over to consumer Linux, and the latest is the real-time Linux kernel extensions although it did take like forever (i.e 20 years) to be adopted by the main line Linux kernel.
kelnos 2y ago
> they're going to make the same mistakes [...] no (e)SATA. > I wish they got back to routing. I feel like you are contradicting yourself.
- M95D 2y ago
  I'm actually not. 1) OpenWrt software has decent support for NAS-on-router, unfortunately OpenWrt hardware didn't make use of that. 2) OpenWrt hardware has non-replaceable wifi for which OpenWrt simply takes upstream drivers with no investment on their part, not even as much as DD-WRT which have Broadcom drivers working. This makes it e-waste almost immediately. I think: - They should abandon hardware entirely. - If they don't abandon hardware, at least target the router+NAS(+home server) niche, not make a router that's even more hw-crippled than most. If you look at this webpage [1], where OpenWrt One was proposed and voted for, the intentions are weak and the result doesn't even match those intentions, while the list of what it wasn't intended to be, is exactly what was needed. [1] https://openwrt.org/voting/2024-01-openwrt-one https://openwrt.org/voting/2024-01-openwrt-one

by M95D 2y ago

wtallis 2y ago

> With OpenWrt Two, I bet they're going to make the same mistakes as OpenWrt One: not enough memory and not upgradable, wifi not replaceable, no usable expansion slots (mini-PCI, M.2) and, of course, no (e)SATA. Another e-waste product that will be obsolete even before it's available to buy. Those are only mistakes if you ignore the realities of what hardware is available. A highly-integrated SoC designed specifically for wireless router usage is a more cost-effective platform than a generic x86 PC. Basing OpenWRT One and Two on such hardware means work to improve support for those systems is more likely to benefit OpenWRT support for mainstream consumer networking equipment that also uses purpose-built SoCs. OpenWRT is not yet in a position to influence the hardware design decisions made by companies like Mediatek, Qualcomm, Broadcom for their consumer WiFi product families. Those chips are still designed around what's best for the big brands that are the primary customers: Netgear, Linksys, TP-Link, etc. Adding SATA controllers to a WiFi router SoC does not benefit Netgear, et al., nor does splitting out all the radios to separate chips that could be installed onto M.2 cards (miniPCI and miniPCIe being long obsolete and bandwidth-starved). Asking for eSATA is laughably unrealistic. A focus on the kind of modular, expandable and upgradable hardware platforms that actually currently exist (namely, PCs) is what leads to the distractions you're complaining about: "video acceleration, mesa, X, wayland, Doom, etc."

teleforce 2y ago
For another approach to open source networking by Linux Foundation please check DENT OS [1]. > OpenWRT is not yet in a position to influence the hardware design decisions made by companies like Mediatek, Qualcomm, Broadcom for their consumer WiFi product families. Perhaps I'm biased, but I do believe DENT is in much better position and has more chance of influencing the white-box networking vendor than OpenWRT with regards to their design decisions. From the website: "As a Linux Foundation project, DENT utilizes the Linux Kernel, Switchdev, and other Linux based projects as the basis for building a new standardized network operating system without abstractions or overhead. All underlying infrastructure — including ASIC and Silicon for networking and datapath — is treated equally; while existing abstractions, APIs, drivers, low-level overhead, and other open software are simplified. DENT unites silicon vendors, ODMs, SIs, OEMs, and end users across all verticals to enable the transition to disaggregated networks." [1] DENT: https://dent.dev/ https://dent.dev/
- wtallis 2y ago
  That doesn't even appear to be attempting to address anything relevant to consumer networking. It's a purely enterprise-focused project, mostly about putting a Debian-based OS onto rackmount ethernet switches.
  - teleforce 2y ago
    >That doesn't even appear to be attempting to address anything relevant to consumer networking Don't be too pessimistic, anything that can contribute to the disaggregation of networking technology will be good for the consumer markets since the companies producing these networking SoC namely Qualcomm, Mediatek, etc should care about their downstream revenues. By adopting the open eco-system champion by SONiC and DENT for networking technology disaggregation, it will definitely spill over to the consumer networking as well since these are the very same companies that design and manufacture the networking pervasive consumer networking SoC. There are too many and numerous examples of Linux enterprise features that are spilling over to consumer Linux, and the latest is the real-time Linux kernel extensions although it did take like forever (i.e 20 years) to be adopted by the main line Linux kernel.

kelnos 2y ago

> they're going to make the same mistakes [...] no (e)SATA. > I wish they got back to routing. I feel like you are contradicting yourself.

M95D 2y ago
I'm actually not. 1) OpenWrt software has decent support for NAS-on-router, unfortunately OpenWrt hardware didn't make use of that. 2) OpenWrt hardware has non-replaceable wifi for which OpenWrt simply takes upstream drivers with no investment on their part, not even as much as DD-WRT which have Broadcom drivers working. This makes it e-waste almost immediately. I think: - They should abandon hardware entirely. - If they don't abandon hardware, at least target the router+NAS(+home server) niche, not make a router that's even more hw-crippled than most. If you look at this webpage [1], where OpenWrt One was proposed and voted for, the intentions are weak and the result doesn't even match those intentions, while the list of what it wasn't intended to be, is exactly what was needed. [1] https://openwrt.org/voting/2024-01-openwrt-one https://openwrt.org/voting/2024-01-openwrt-one