I'm interested in getting the Linksys MR6350 committed. A fair amount of work was done by @rwl408 and @RolandoMagico.
I think my question applies broadly to Linksys Dual boot devices so I started a new thread.
I'm interested in pushing it across the finish line. Both developers upgraded Dual-Band to the Tri-Band MR8300 and have expressed no interest in further work. I live in a rural area the MR6350 can handle all the bandwith the local ISP provides and Linksys recertified MR6350 are, at the time of the post, available for ~$30USD.
@RolandoMagico code, on github, had issues with upgrades and I think he always used TFTP+serial to flash his builds. His github code has base-file/lib/upgrade as compex,wpj419) nand_do_upgrade "$1" ;; linksys,ea6350v3 | linksys,ea8300 | linksys,mr6350 | linksys,mr8300) platform_do_upgrade_linksys "$1" ;; meraki,mr33) CI_KERNPART="part.safe" nand_do_upgrade "$1"
ipq40xx devices are fine, as long as WAN and WLAN throughput suffice, but 30 USD for a used device doesn't quite feel like a bargain (you should be able to get considerably better wifi6 devices for that money).
These devices were returned to Linksys who checked them out and reflashed the latest OEM firmware. They look brand new. I went the same route on my EA7300v2 which provided a reliable device for almost 5 years.
this is a device that was released in 2020, five years or half a decade ago!
it's ipq4019, meaning it can route at roughly ~300 MBit/s
2x2 802.11ac/ wave2 ~= wifi5, around 250-300 MBit/s in practice (866 MBit/s for 5 GHz on paper)
it's used, they may call it refurbished, but that means it's used
don't get me wrong, no problem about that, but that should be reflected in the price
ipq40xx is well supported, it works and will continue to be supported for quite a while to come (knocking on wood)
So that's all fine, getting it supported should be relatively straight forward to do as well - all the more power to you, if you take that task.
The only thing I am saying, is that I would expect 'better' devices for 30 USD in 2025. A couple of years ago used (non-refurbished) RAC2V1K (ipq8065, same generation of hardware, but faster clockspeed and 4x4 wifi) were sold in the US for ~20 USD a pop. ~2 years ago Walmart was regularly selling the rt3200 (wifi 6) for ~40 USD and less. MX5300/ MX5500 (refurbished) has been on the market around that ballpark quite recently as well. As I'm located on the other side of the big pond I'm not really up to speed with the US market and its bargains, but given the precedent above I would expect there to be similar devices around these days as well.
So yes, it's good if the mr6350 would get OpenWrt support one day - and if you own one, cool, should serve you well (within its performance bracket). But I wouldn't recommend to go out and choose to buy those for 30 USD today in 2025, because I'm confident that you could find better (probably already supported) wifi6 devices instead.
Disclaimer: I do own four ipq4019 devices, they are working fine and were great when I got them (half of them new, the other half in used/ non-refurbished condition), still working fine - but I certainly wouldn't seek to buy them again in 2025 (not because they'd be bad, they aren't, but because there is better in this price bracket). (And to be honest, I did already get wifi6 devices for my primary 'production' use cases).
I think I figured out that the platform_do_upgrade_linksys "$1" enables the flashing of OEM firmware from the OpenWRT boot. This will be included when adding support for the Linksys MR6350.