I'd personally recommend FreshTomato[0] over OpenWRT, as it has a more approachable UI, is still open-source, and (in my experience) tends to run a bit smoother while needing less babysitting.
This is something commercial routers get right, updates keep your settings. This requirement will cause you to delay if you use any of the complexity of the router and that leaves you open to attacks. IMO its not a great choice today due to this one fatal flaw.
hostname# _
hostname# sho run
This is all it takes to backup ALL config. Also a short form of “show running-config”. If you follow best practices and take logs of all ssh connection it’s naturally there a second after.
Restoring? Just paste it on HyperTerminal. Cisco sues anyone who dares to replicate this exact behavior(e.g. Huawei-3Com), but similar commands exist for most professional network equipment such as Vyatta/VyOS’ `show configuration commands`.
Manual updates don't bother me, personally, but wifi throughput is definitely a pain point (my understanding is the lower speeds are due to FreshTomato doing more with the CPU than stock firmware does, which decreases the amount of CPU time that actual routing gets).