Something with a more normal way of updating the packages and OS would be nice. I thought I'd heard someone was working on an Alpine-based thing a few years ago, but haven't heard anything since.

Agreed. When I last tried to update packages there was a scary disclaimer about it being likely to break the system, and that flashing a new firmware is preferred.

I nope'd out of that, and don't wish to go through the hassle of flashing again, so my AP is running a year+ old version. It works fine, and I'm not too concerned about it, but I would still like to be able to easily upgrade the system without worrying about breaking it.

They did replace opkg with apk recently https://forum.openwrt.org/t/major-change-notice-new-package-...