this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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I've been running OpenWrt for over 10 years but at this point it is trash. The documentation is outdated, the packages aren't well maintained and Luci development is torture. I'm so ready to stop trying and get UniFi devices. Heck, pfSense/OPNsense are so much better.
Been running OpenWRT for 16 years (okay some of those years was dd-wrt, and LEDE.. But you get the point.)
Using them as dumb AP's is what I really appreciate openwrt for.. I can buy consumer grade hardware and get an actually stable experience as a WiFi AP. Not the typical "oh the WiFi is slow/stopped working? You have reboot it twice a month!" You get with the manufacturer's shit software. I have a full opnsense box that handles firewall duties and vpn's etc.. So I really only like and need the stability of the hardware as an AP.
I also stock pile WiFi routers running OpenWRT and give them to friends that don't have a lot of money when I help with tech upgrades, knowing the WiFi router will be rock solid and not cause any issues. They truly are 'set it and forget it' units.
You've made good points here. Using them as dumb AP points or basic budget routers makes sense. If I want more advanced and user-friendly configuration then I might look elsewhere, but for those use cases, can't go wrong.
I also have been running OpenWRT for over 10 years and I agree, software management is archaic and painful. I exclusively use it for dumb APs now and just use OPNSense upstream to actually manage my network and devices. It’s been pretty nice in that regard for a couple years now.
Seconding this, I do the same. It's a terrible sign that it took me longer to figure out how to successfully create VLANs and assign them to SSIDs in OpenWRT, which is a fairly simple concept, than it took me to learn basically anything about OPNSense, a vastly more powerful and complex tool.
I appreciate OpenWRT for giving me FOSS firmware I can slap on my AP, and I certainly don't want to come across as entitled to the free labor of the developers, but it's just objectively not very good from a UI/UX perspective.
what, ive been running it pretty smoothly for just about a decade now...
what do you dislike about it?