SoylentNews

drussell [soylentnews.org] writes:

The OpenWrt [openwrt.org] community is proud to announce the newest stable release of the OpenWrt 24.10 stable [openwrt.org] series.

The OpenWrt Project is a Linux operating system targeting embedded devices. It is a complete replacement for the vendor-supplied firmware of a wide range of wireless routers and non-network devices.

Instead of trying to create a single, static firmware, OpenWrt provides a fully writable filesystem with package management. This frees you from the application selection and configuration provided by the vendor and allows you to customize the device through the use of packages to suit any application. For developers, OpenWrt is the framework to build an application without having to build a complete firmware around it; for users this means the ability for full customization, to use the device in ways never envisioned.

If you're not familiar with OpenWrt, it really is quite a nifty OS ecosystem and many commercially available routers even run OpenWrt under the hood behind a manufacturer-specific user-facing web interface.

While installing OpenWrt on a device will not magically transform older, less capable hardware into faster Wi-Fi for your home or something, many devices are effectively crippled from the factory as to the hardware capabilities you can utilize, the options, packages and software capabilities you can use by their stock firmware.

Newer devices gain all possible functionality through a fully capable software suite and extensible packages. Devices with bugs, security issues or simply abandoned by their manufacturer but still capable of good performance from the hardware can be brought up to date and used successfully with the updated OS. Older devices no longer suited to their original, intended purpose (like a slow Wi-Fi chip) can be re-purposed into something useful, for example using an old router with a USB port as a NAS server for your LAN by simply connecting storage.

This latest 24.10.1 release addresses some of the various issues and regressions caused by some of the underlying fundamental changes from the previous 23.5.x series to the initial 24.10.0 release.

Personally, I've come to use it quite extensively across a wide range of devices. [openwrt.org] Note though that as of this moment, many of the firmware download links, etc. have yet to be updated to specifically point to 24.10.1 as the release roll-out proceeds.

Original Submission