Hacker News Reader

Most of the time it's because of the drivers: not open source, not compatible with newer kernel, and not updated by the manufacturer.

View on HN

OpenWRT solves this by refusing to incorporate devices that require binary blobs (read: Broadcom)

This significantly shrinks the number of devices they support, but the devices that are supported have their lifespans increased significantly

Thanks, I wondered why my router kernel went from 4.xx to 6.1 after flashing OpenWRT, especially when MediaTek is notorious for poor kernel support. This actually makes me respect OpenWRT even more.

MediaTek is pretty decent in terms of open source support for their WiFi chips and SoCs, to the point of continuously supporting a long time OpenWRT developer (Felix Fietkau) to work on their OpenWRT device drivers. This is an effort that is independent of their closed source drivers for the same devices.

Doesn't mean everything MTK does shines under the sun, but in Linux WiFi, they are probably the most open and well supported in the modern age.

Are you sure you are using an official OpenWrt image? Stable is still 5.10 and Snapshot (master branch) is 5.15.

6.x kernel is not expected to land anytime soon (late this year or early next year maybe?)

If you have a 6.x kernel, this is probably a fork of OpenWrt.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com