On Sat, 16 May 2009, Brian J. Murrell wrote: > On Thu, 2009-05-14 at 04:43 -0400, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > you can never get a simple answer to a simple question, > > that question being: > > > > "which routers work with openwrt"? > > Indeed, I tend to agree.
and, as i've already mentioned, the most obvious flaw in getting that info out there is that, at the main http://openwrt.org page, the link labelled "Supported Devices" simply leaves you at the main page. that's a pretty major flaw. indeed, it's kind of unforgivable since it's the first thing new users are going to look for, and it takes them nowhere. not good. > > 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***. > > Yes. It seems the entire wiki is geared around the idea of "OK. > so I have this router... how well does it work with OpenWRT and what > do I need to do to/with it?". > > It completely fails to address the other class of potential OpenWRT > user, as Robert points out: "OK. So I have cash and am going to buy > a router. But I don't have enough money to also buy a bottle of > asprin or bourbon, so which router should I buy?". or, put more simply, all the info there approaches the issue from the wrong direction. it's not, "i have a router, how can i put openwrt on it?" rather, it should be, "i want to run openwrt, what router should i buy?" > > * 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 > > Perhaps that simply doesn't exist. The closest I know of, and which > I use personally is the ASUS wl500gp. It does have broadcom > wireless, but it's a mini-PCI card so replaceable with something > that does work. i know. amusingly, that's only true with the v1. the v2 regresses(?) back to a built-in wireless chipset. some days, you just can't win. > I didn't actually replace my wireless card as buying another > wireless router and simply making it a wired/wireless bridge > (running Tomato) was cheaper[1]. I do all my Openwrt stuff on the > ASUS as my firewall without wireless. heh, that's funny -- i have the wl500gp also running openwrt without wireless. great minds think alike. or is it fools seldom differ? i always get those two confused. > > does such a thing exist? > > NTMK. which is too bad, since i think that's openwrt's major drawback. it's clearly excellent software, supported by clever people. but the marketing falls flat. it doesn't matter how good your product is -- if you can't walk new users through how to start using it, it's in trouble. rday -- ======================================================================== 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
