I'm a staunch defender of OpenWRT. Having used just about every "router distro" folks care to name (remember SmoothWall?) for the last 20~ years, OpenWRT is built like a tank and just keeps trundling along

I hope their experiments with the "OpenWRT One" keep going. I'd love to see OpenWRT take a (deserved) bite out of the "SMB firewall vendors" like Netgate or OPNsense. Or just undercutting Wi-Fi vendors like Ubiquiti who base their work on OpenWRT anyway

Something I'm excited to try myself in future is running "OpenWISP" [1] to manage a small fleet (three) OpenWRT devices in parallel for a deployment in a shared workshop. This seems to also be something that OpenWRT could be better at integrating, but it's nice to see "a vendor" tackling it

[1] https://openwisp.org/

Ease of managing multiple OpenWRT devices is still its weakest link. OpenWRT is device centric, but I don't want to managed devices, I want to manage a network.

Modern mesh WiFi systems I've seen do that so well. I know in theory that I could create a VLAN + SSID on my OpenWRT router and APs just for iot devices to only access the internet. But setting that up on a TP-Link mesh was a couple of taps in their app. Doing it on my OpenWRT devices would be quite a bit more hassle.

At home, I built an OPNsense box to evaluate (using Sophos XG135 Rev 3 hardware, along with an OpenWrt nice Netgear WiFi AP on POE), but then went back to a plastic OpenWrt all-in-one box.

OPNsense (and pfSense) are neat, but I personally don't need an IDS/IPS right now, and I like to be able to run the router fanless.

One thing that OpenWrt could use immediately, for basic home WiFi router functionality, is easier ways to add guest-like VLANs from the Luci Web-based admin UI. (I currently have a guest VLAN config that I partly cargo-culted with numerous steps in Luci years ago, largely based on a blog post, and that would be a pain to reconstruct on a new install.)

For techies whose households include non-techies, a little IDS/IPS could help keep some nasty traffic off your home Internet pipe, and I suppose that could now run alongside OpenWrt on some of the more powerful plastic boxes, or on a PC with the right WiFi devices/APs. (In addition to use of VLANs and routing to minimize damage from all the malware-infested devices, and also thinking "zero trust" for the techie stuff you run.)

I definitely believe people underestimate the potential of OpenWRT as an app platform. Before getting sidelined with work I did some proof of concept WebRTC SFU on it https://github.com/atomirex/umbrella which worked surprisingly well.

Was also surprised, then not surprised, to learn it's used as the front end on many of the new generation of 3D printers.

> I hope their experiments with the "OpenWRT One" keep going.

OpenWRT Two is scheduled for late 2025 from GL.iNet and should go for ~$250.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43512495

OpenWISP states in its docs that you should be running at least 20 devices to make it worth it. [1] So it's not supposed to be a easy way to manage a few devices for home users.

> However, OpenWISP may not be the best fit for very small networks (fewer than 20 devices), organizations lacking IT expertise, or enterprises seeking open-source alternatives solely for cost-saving purposes.

1: https://openwisp.org/faq/#suitable

"Or just undercutting Wi-Fi vendors like Ubiquiti who basse their work on OpenWRT anyway."

Not sure about today, but this company used to sell hardware whose capabilities were IIRC only "fully enabled" if the buyer used the company's closed source OS. An open source OS might work with the hardware but the buyer would not get the same performance.

At the time, the HN comments continuously supported this company. It appeared that for these commmenters, this was a worthwhile sacrifice. They would just keep recommending Ubiquiti. (Unsolicted recommendations)

We once delivered a totally not router box running openwrt, just because it was very simple and bastardising openwrt was easier than yocto.

Related, I used to love going to the monowall website gallery to see all the labgore. It's still there like a time capsule: https://m0n0.ch/wall/gallery.php

I went smallwall after m0n0wall was shutdown. I recall the smallwall & smoothwall maintainers briefly considered joining forces.

>I'd love to see OpenWRT take a (deserved) bite out of the "SMB firewall vendors" like Netgate or OPNsense. Or just undercutting Wi-Fi vendors like Ubiquiti who base their work on OpenWRT anyway

Why? You don't want competition in the space?

>Or just undercutting Wi-Fi vendors like Ubiquiti who base their work on OpenWRT anyway

Huh? The older edgerouters were based on vyatta. The newer ones on a custom linux distro, neither of which are OpenWRT. They hired the original author of pfsense to build them a firewall based on Debian from scratch when they realized vyatta wasn't going to meet their needs. The UDM kernel is very much not OpenWRT

https://github.com/fabianishere/udm-kernel

Being excited about OpenWRT is great but spreading bad information and for reasons I can't fathom hoping for the downfall of other players in the market, not so much.

> vendors like Ubiquiti who base their work on OpenWRT anyway

I thought Ubiquity’s firmwares were all based on Debian. Is this no longer the case?

> I'd love to see OpenWRT take a (deserved) bite out of the "SMB firewall vendors" like Netgate

I'll just leave this here: https://www.netgate.com/blog/pfsense-software-embraces-chang...

OPNsense are unlikely to be able to make this transition, as they can't even reliably work on the FreeBSD kernel.

I hope OpenWrt doesn't turn too commercial (like Netgate or opnsense) because that leads just to subscriptions, enshittification, feature gates, and drama. It is now in a good place as a solid platform to build upon, I hope it stays that way.