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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • No not anymore. I no longer find it necessary now. Things have become much easier. Many routers have out-of-factory OpenWrt support or are outright built with/on OpenWrt. Companies like GL.iNet has made the barrier to entry the lowest ever.

    Gone were the days we had to spot the right hardware versions, find ways to access debug ports, tinker with das uboot (or it had to be added…), flush the official firmware, and flash the right OpenWRT image. And this often would set you down on a path to compile the “right” kernel to work with proprietary driver/firmware blob files so hardware acceleration (e.g. NAT or WiFi radio) could work properly… Indeed I have learnt a lot but honestly I don’t really miss those days lol








  • Pi should not be the first choice unless you just wanna dip your toe in the water with limited investment or you are real experienced in the trade. While the hardware is powerful enough for many use cases, it is very limited in external connectivity which really hampers its potential as a NAS/multi-purpose server.

    CPUs often get less efficient (in the sense of work done per watt) when they are pushed to their limits. Unless you are running the server at full load all the time, the power consumption of a typical x86 system is quite manageable (~30-50W) at idle to low usage. Newer hardware is surely more efficient as newer designs are relatively faster and often have more power conservation technologies built-in.