On Wed, 13 May 2009, Weedy wrote: > Christ Schlacta wrote: > > tried 2.6 8.09 with a wrt54gl earlier this year. it failed > > miserably where 2.4 worked flawlessly.
> congrats now try something not 4 months old. Or just build trunk, it > works for me. and forgive me for being blunt, but this is why i find openwrt (or at least the online docs) so teeth-grindingly, thigh-suckingly frustrating -- you can never get a simple answer to a simple question, that question being: "which routers work with openwrt"? while there is copious information at openwrt.org and in sub-pages and in the wiki, there is *nothing* that will help a beginner who wants to get started with openwrt and would simply like to know what router to buy that will ***work***. it starts with the main page at openwrt,org, where you can see the link "Supported Devices", which you would suspect a newcomer would immediately follow, which takes him ... back to the main page. not terribly helpful -- perhaps someone can fix that. there is the wiki hardware page here: http://oldwiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware.html which enumerates a bazillion manufacturers and their various models and their various states of support and/or brokenness, while the poor newbie is still asking, "can you recommend a router that, um, you know, works?" the newbie most likely isn't interested in how many routers are "works in progress," he just wants something he can go plop down some cash for that works. on that very hardware page, there's a link labelled "Supported platforms on kamikaze". ok, that sounds promising, let's go there, where we find: https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/platforms now if the newbie isn't familiar with router internals, he might have no idea that, say, the linksys wrt54gl running a 2.6 kernel would correspond to the brcm47xx entry. but even if he does, and follows that link here: https://dev.openwrt.org/wiki/brcm47xx he first reads, "Status: Working as of [6564]", which is great until you read further to learn that there are "some stability issue." so ... does that mean it works, or it doesn't? the newbie still isn't sure. and trying to track this stuff in the forums doesn't clarify anything, as it might consist of people arguing back and forth, as in: http://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=19202 an interactive forum is a terrific place to *solve* issues; it is a *terrible* place to expect someone to go for information because forums inevitably consist of animated discussion of people arguing and disagreeing with one another, which is of no interest to someone who just (and you know what's coming here) wants to know what router ***works***. relative newcomers probably aren't interested in the process by which a router is debugged -- they just want to know the end results. does it work or doesn't it? and this thread is another example of the very confusion of which i speak -- one person claims wifi on the wr5t54gl works, another person claims otherwise, etc, etc. who's right? under what circumstances? why isn't there one correct answer to that question? in the end, there are copious amounts of information at openwrt.org scattered throughout its various sub-pages and in the wiki. what's missing is a single page that contains the most important information of all -- a list of routers that work. that simply isn't there, and it's the most glaring omission of all. people interested in testing openwrt don't want to crawl through a hardware table or dig into forums -- if they're beginners, they just want someone else to tell them what to buy. in all the time i've dabbled with openwrt, i have people occasionally telling me they'd like to play with it and could i recommend a router to get them started and they'd really prefer to work with the latest software and a 2.6 kernel because they moved on from 2.4 long ago and would rather not go back. and i can't give them a recommendation, because i don't know of such a router. and if there was a page listing that sort of thing, i could just point them at it. but i can't. and that's a shame. rday -- p.s. getting back to my wish list, here's what i want -- a router which: * runs the latest 2.6 version of kamikaze (perhaps needing to wait for the imminent 8.09.1) * wireless works out of the box, no screwing around * ideally has at least one 2.0 USB port, preferably two does such a thing exist? seriously, is there a single commercial router out there that i can pull out of its shrinkwrap, load with openwrt and have it do what it's supposed to, perhaps with 8.09.1? more thoughts on this after a cup of coffee or two, if you can stand it. ======================================================================== Robert P. J. Day Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry. Web page: http://crashcourse.ca Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rpjday Twitter: http://twitter.com/rpjday ======================================================================== _______________________________________________ openwrt-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-users
