Thank you, folks.
I've been following along (without moving my lips, even!), and I like what I see. Other projects would do well to note that playing well with others is usually a good idea. This round's on me.
The OpenWRT project has emitted version 18.06, and in doing so, puts to rest the damage done by the March 2016 fork that created the competing project LEDE (Linux Embedded Development Environment). When the two groups completed their merger earlier this year, they said their aim for the future was for OpenWRT to focus on …
It's not really accurate to talk about the "damage done" by the fork. It's not like there were ever really two projects running in parallel.
The reality was there was an active team of developers who were being hampered by the original OpenWRT project infrastructure still being under the control of founders who had little involvement any more, and apparently little time. The active developers forked LEDE through frustration to enable progress. OpenWRT development immediately stalled.
The re-merge was basically a case of the inactive founders finally getting the message and handing over control of the domain to the active, ongoing project.
Agreed on the excellent work. All network devices in my house run OpenWRT, similar for the more complex setups at my parents. I only buy routers and access points if I know I can flash OpenWrt on them as soon as I unpack them.
It makes the purchasing process a lot easier. Check the 'Ideal for OpenWrt' table (https://openwrt.org/toh/views/toh_available_864) and then you can purchase any brand on that list solely based on the hardware specs. Whether that brand is known for their support, providing updates, good UI, stable software etc. is all irrelevant as you rely on OpenWrt and not on some manufacturer's code that may have been written by a drunk intern under time pressure on a Friday afternoon.
Yep, I'm the same, I wouldn't consider running anything else on a home router.
You only have to looks at things like the WPA2 bug last year to see the benefit. How many router manufacturers released patched firmware for their old routers? How many unsupported routers are still out there, permanently vulnerable? Mine were secured within a day of hearing about it.
OpenWRT is Very Excellent. But this is a .0, and yes, 18.06.0 has fallen foul of a kernel bug on some platforms - https://bugs.openwrt.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=1541. For me this is screwing up IPv6 between wired and wireless hosts in my network. I'm an ar71xx, so on 4.9.111. Many other targets are on 4.14.52, and so are unaffected.