I have been using OpenWrt for a few months so I am almost new but the thing is as far as I understood there are some engineers who work on creating a compatible version of OpenWrt for MPUs. The main point of my question is how they do this. For learning this topic, I choose RTL8196 because it is really cheap for me. I may design a PCB using it if I can use the newer version of OpenWrt on it. I knew RTL8196 is old but I think it is good for some fun projects. I read other topics about RTL8196 but I could not get much mainly because they were old and people did not like RTL8196. I was wondering if you could guide me to have a view about making OpenWrt for special MPU. Regards
There is a useful link:
github
OpenWRT tries to stay close to the mainline Linux kernel. I don't know much about these SoCs, but there is an archived post on the old OpenWRT forum here:
http://forum.archive.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=46606
edit: newer thread: Working Realtek SoC RTL8196E 97D 97F in last master
Realtek took a (now very very old) version of Linux, and modified it to run on the 8196, but did not contribute their changes back to Linux. Because no volunteers merged their work (maybe the changes were too messy or large) at the time, it will be very large amount of work to add mainline Linux support at this stage. Possibly compiler patches would also be needed. I'd recommend picking a cheap SoC with mainline Linux support already (another Realtek if you like, or maybe an Allwinner or Rockchip etc.).
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