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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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As a linux user, do you know about/use openwrt? (lemdro.id)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

110 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have many nerdy friends who have been Linux users for ages. But most of them don't know such a thing as Openwrt exists or have never bothered to give it a try. It's a very fun piece of software to play with and can be extremely useful for routing traffic. Wondering why it isn't more popular/widely used.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Interesting. I have heard of it but so far I didnt bother since my router is quite versatile.

My biggest fear is that it borks itself and I sit there at 10 pm on movie night without a network or internet to troubleshoot.

If if I chose to use it I would need to have the current router as a fallback either running 24/7 or on a dead man switch.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

been running it for years now, no weird sudden stability problems whatsoever.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Some routers have dual partition setup.

Active and backup. When flashing firmware, it is flashed to the backup partition. If the router boots successfully, the newly flashed backup partition becomes active and vice versa. If things screw up, nothing happens.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the info. Thats not exactly what I meant. I‘m not afraid of the router itself breaking at installation but freezing for example and not being able to reboot. I usually dont tinker with mission critical stuff.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I know you likely have moved on but it would be interesting to actually figure out the cause. What steps would someone need to take to reproduce the issue?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

That's exactly what I do. You can keep your ISP router and hook up your openwrt router to one of its lan ports and have two wifi networks.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

My biggest fear is that it borks itself and I sit there at 10 pm on movie night without a network or internet to troubleshoot.

If you pick decent hardware eg. Netgear R7800 you won't have issues. I've units of those running OpenWrt at home and a few small offices running for years with a lot of clients and traffic and they're rock solid.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It is not normal for it to just stop working

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

not at all.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not at all what?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

take a guess

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Stable? In my experience OpenWRT is very stable. Can you share the hardware and software you were using?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

my hardware configuration on openwrt is very stable too