I'm looking at getting more devices, and if possible I'd like to reward vendors "doing the right thing" and working with the upstream OpenWRT project. It's hard to know from a glance at the git web UIs whether any of the commits were authored by device vendor employees.
(Ideally I'd like either good VLAN support or good Wifi 5 (AC) support, but there are other threads for those things.)
GL.iNet is known to stick rather closely to vanilla OpenWrt, and they occasionally even upstream device support.
This might be a question for a developer that goes by "nbd." AFAIK, there is some relation between nbd and a vendor.
BUT GL.iNet uses quite some private (NOT open source) code in their stuff. Which means, it is NOT possible to fully build their openwrt-variant from source.
As basically all vendors do. They all rely on ancient SDKs. GL.iNet is the only one I know of that actually bothers to use a recent enough actual OpenWrt codebase - and not some Frankenstein SDK.
In the end, an OEM needs a stable enough codebase to sell its hardware with. And proven drivers, which often end up to be the binary ones the likes of Qualcomm etc. provide to them.
TELTONIKA is another example, using a recent enough actual OpenWrt codebase. However, they also use quite some private (NOT open source) code in their stuff. Which means, the devices of both suppliers are very limited in customization. Unless "official" openwrt can be flashed. Which is valid for quite a few devices from GL.iNET and a very few from TELTONIKA.
I used to buy Gl Inet because of being able to flash openwrt on it. I just bought two SFT 1200 they have a lot of flash I got excited but seems that they are more a siflower product and dont know if they will get support on the main stream openwrt. that´s sad.. i want to buy openwrt devices.
Which devices that you would recommend?
For hardware recommendations please open a new topic in the Hardware Questions and Recommendations category of this forum.
Is exactly my problem. I learned from here (How do GL-iNet devices become supported by official OpenWrt releases? - #29 by feliciano) the problems regarding the GL-Inet devices.
So my next router definitely will be a fritzbox4040. Costs are higher, but I'm so tired hunting for a compatible device. AFAIK I know AVM isn't supporting OpenWRT officially, but at least round about 3% of the actual OpenWRT driven devices is this FB4040.Why AVM should remove the possibility to flash this box?
Don't have a personal experience with their hardware, but Turris/nic.cz folks do contribute to OpenWrt.
Depends on who you ask, I guess.
huh, that is exactly what is being stated, that they DO support.
that was the reply to what @slh wrote, didn't want to link to both posts, and his initial statement was quoted in the reply.
Banana Pi pays an OpenWrt developer to maintain support their router boards (the BPI-R2, BPI-R64, and BPI-R3). They also work veyr closely with Mediatek themselves, who has a couple Linux kernel devs on the payroll.
The above are all released as "development" boards. The first two, the R2 and R64 (based on the MediaTek mt7623 and mt7622 respectively) both work very well with OpenWrt, but both are a little too homebrew for me to recommend to the general public. The R2 needs an mPCIe board for WiFi, and unless you 3D print your own case, the case they offer for it needs extra holes drilled for more antennae (only has one). The R64 has 4x4 2.4GHz WiFi N which is solid, but for 5GHz and/or WiFi 6 you still need an mPCIe card and you still need to munge the case they supply for extra antennae (one case has no holes, the other has four)
Don't get me wrong, the R2 and R64 are excellent devices. I have an R2 and two R64's ,and together with AsiaRF's 7915 mPCIe cards, they are fantastic. If you are even a little handy, they make great devices. They are, as I said, just a little too homebrew for a general recommendatipon.
The BPI-R3 is a bit of a game changer. It has 4t4r 2.4GHz + 4t4r 5GHz Wifi 6 baked in, and comes in a full kit that's pretty easy to put together. Like all BPI's other router boards, it has expansion slots. A general PCIe m.2 slot, and a mPCIe slot for USB-only cards. Plus it introduces two 2.5gbit SFP mounts. I've been very impressed with it, more so that it's availalbe in full kits with everything you need and no case mangling required.
EDIT: Whoops, I didn't realize the original post was so old.