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submitted 9 months ago by mfat to c/linux@lemmy.ml

I have many nerdy friends who have been Linux users for ages. But most of them don't know such a thing as Openwrt exists or have never bothered to give it a try. It's a very fun piece of software to play with and can be extremely useful for routing traffic. Wondering why it isn't more popular/widely used.

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[-] jhdeval@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

I am aware of openwrt and used to use when I used router hardware. I have moved to pfsense. I install it on either a 1 liter mini PC or some other older enterprise piece of hardware.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago

It is fairly easy as for most hardware it is pre configured in a way that makes sense.

Setting it up in a VM is a different story

[-] zarenki@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

I've long known about it. I don't seriously use it, but I would if only my Wi-Fi router was fully supported. It's an Asus one (that I got for free from T-Mobile a decade ago) so I installed Asuswrt-Merlin on it instead.

Following the recommendation of homelab communities, I got into OpnSense (a BSD-based firewall system for x86 hardware only) last year, still keeping my Wi-Fi router as a dedicated AP. In hindsight I somewhat regret that choice and probably would've been better off buying a new OpenWRT-compatible router and using it to handle firewall/routing/AP all in one device instead of wasting the power draw of another separate N100 system. I like having wireguard and vnstat in my router now, which Merlin didn't offer, but I know OpenWRT has those too and I don't have any other needs that warrant a higher-power router.

[-] RandoCalrandian@kbin.social -1 points 9 months ago

In my experience it's because it's finicky as fuck and requires very specific (and often more expensive) router models, and even then it still crashes just as much as a proprietary os router.

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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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