The CM4 is currently running Ubuntu but I'm curious to know if it could run OpenWRT.
I don't need high end graphics, just basic stuff like display of images, maybe video, graphs like digital clock and other things. No games or anything like that.
OpenWrt wouldn't give you anything but a 80x25 tty anyways, regardless of the question if you can make the LCD work in the first place.
Thanks.
Yes, I know it works for text only but wondered if it could do basic graphics using the right packages.
The short answer is: no.
The medium answer would be: hell, no!.
The long answer is: it's linux underneath, you can do anything you manage to do - you just have to package around >50 packages and integrate them into the whole OS. If you want to do that, cool - if you have to ask about it, you can't. It's not rocket science (as the major general purpose distributions prove), but it's a heck of a lot of work, shoehorning all that into a system that is not designed with it in mind. It's predominantly a router, not a gaming console.
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Of course I had to ask, there's no way of knowing what packages are out there that might have supported something like that. Asking saved me a lot of time so I'll not bother spending more time on this, even if it could be done with a lot of work.
Thanks for your help, much appreciated.
It's much easier making arch/debian/fedora/gentoo/mageia/mandriva/opensuse/ubuntu a router (on supported hardware), than making OpenWrt run firefox or chromium. Making any of the above run on a plastic router, with 16/128 and a braindead vendor bootloader, however…
Making a general purpose distribution on supported hardware a decent router: ~a rainy afternoon, you only lack a nice webinterface and easy configurations.
Making OpenWrt sing and dance: expect to spend your summer holidays, but the bigger problem would be keeping all that stuff maintained (after the initial packaging), updated (suddenly you open a huge attack surface, many high-risk libraries, etc.) and integrated.
Right and that's exactly why I posted, I was not sure if there were already some packages or solutions so now I know. Thanks again.
There are - and there are not. it's not that simple. What is there, is very limited, extremely targeted to the use-cases of the developers behind it, I wouldn't be all that confident about the support state - and on top of that I don't think you'd get away without a lot of work (additional patches, kernel config changes, mesa changes, etc.) on the bcm27xx target.
It is possible, just not sensible.
I wouldn't even think about it on x86_64 (even on x86_64 all the necessary accelerated graphics stuff is disabled in the kernel, as it's not needed for a router).
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Why? As in, what is your use case?
My initial reaction is slap Raspberry Pi OS on it and call it a day.
But maybe there is a nice solution like a kiosk browser for your home assistant. Think Electron controlled via MQTT, so you can easily turn the screen on/off together with lights or presence detection.