Maybe @Chris from Thinkpenguin will answer, in the meantime: The Reddit criticism is mainly from people who don't believe the freedom is first priority. As one commenter points out the age of the chipset is not really a detriment if the speed is adequate to your Internet connection's speed. The other criticism seems to be of a similar nature - from someone who buys the latest thing with the biggest number rather than take a realistic look at what they actually need and will use. E.g. a recent review of 802.11ac routers on the register.co.uk pointed out that only one laptop they knew of shipped was capable of 400Mb/s speeds, let alone faster. So the poster talking of 900Mb/s probably needs their xxxxx substitute complex checking.
The Trisquel thread is about how someone with more time than money might be able to buy the same thing and flash it themselves for less. Then about how it is not an ADSL router - which it plainly isn't and the need for an additional ADSL to Ethernet modem (which I'm personally not convinced is what he's getting from his ISP in a meaningful way) is well known and documented. Of note is that if you want to run the risk of doing it yourself there is also a very specific revision of one model of a Buffalo ethernet router supported by LibreWRT, another GNU FSDG / FSF approved small system distro. Other than these two for purpose built routers the rest are merely shades of grey and black risks in respect of security and Five Eyes/Snowden issues. (E.g. one major UK ISP (BT) mandates its own router which is known to have a backdoor considered to probably be for the use of GCHQ, police and others). As someone else has pointed out before on the forum the third solution is to use a second desktop [e.g. your old one] with a second NIC, WiFi and a switch. However, AFAIK there are no libre firewall distros so there'll be quite some config work. Plus the power/space requirements rule this out for most family homes I know of. The bottom line is the TP router being preloaded, having vendor support and RYF certification is a win for most people. Which is why I pre-ordered one of the new batch. Leny
