Hello!
My current router doesn't have enough RAM for all my needs, so I've been thinking about using a home server I built from an old laptop instead of buying a new, more powerful router. It has an i5-3210M, 16GB of RAM, a gigabit internet port, and an AR5B22 WiFi module running at ath9k. All my devices connect via WiFi, so the lack of a wired local network isn't a drawback in my case. This is the diagram I came up with in my head:
Internet
||
Primary Router
||
____ Server ____
/ / \ \
Client1 Client2 Client3 Client4
My internet provider distributes internet to me via a cable connected to the primary router. This router will be used to turn on the server via the local network (wake-on-LAN) when needed. The server, in addition to its main tasks (primarily Docker containerization), will have a virtual machine, container, or something else running OpenWrt installed that distributes internet via Wi-Fi. Clients will connect to this virtual machine via Wi-Fi and access the internet.
But what exactly should I choose for installing OpenWrt? An internet search yields a lot of results using Proxmox, but for me, the huge downside is that it limits my choice of operating system on the server. I spent the whole day today trying to get a QEMU virtual machine running on OpenWrt, but I couldn't figure out how to add a Wi-Fi adapter to set up a wireless network. I immediately rejected the idea of installing it as the main system. I immediately abandoned the idea of installing OpenWrt as the main system...
So, please tell me, which installation method is the simplest and easiest in terms of adding a Wi-Fi adapter for a wireless network?
Thanks.