Kudos to the developers. Backing up configs and removing the applications, e.g., Netdata, luci-mod-dashboard, luci-app-nlbwmon, luci-app-statistics, irqbalance, vnstat2, zram, and sqm, I successfully upgraded to 25.12.1. With EXTRoot running on a 256GB SSD board, the reinstallation of this and the plugins brought Waveform’s bufferbloat test from a score of B- to an A.
While this is used as a wireless extension to a lab that runs two NAS devices, three Linux workstations, one Windows Workstation, two laptops, and a cluster AI device; it provides the needed open-source capabilities in this environment.
With hundreds of devices to support and thousands of configurations, you can easily see the challenges that come forward or raise issues later.
Have I had upgrades that went south? Absolutely. 99% of the time it’s what I overlooked or I didn’t wait. I try to keep configs and backups if something goes wrong in regards to the 99% or the 1%.
With the number of devices and configs available, I think the personnel who develop OpenWRT are doing a great job.