Simple, powerful and stable Firmware for LinkSys WRT54GL

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I have just bought a Linksys WRT54G router, which has the ability to load custom firmware.

As there are lots of them around the web, Can anyone recommend a FOSS simple, powerful and stable firmware package that also supports port forwarding?

Adam Matan

Posted 2009-07-30T17:52:59.857

Reputation: 5 930

Question was closed 2016-11-03T18:58:56.137

Answers

17

Round up:

  1. People love DD-WRT because it supports all kinds of cpus pretty well. It is sort of commercial. But the money aspect seems to keep them motivated.
  2. People love OpenWRT because it is open and libre. Also it's more like running your own linux on a low-power box. It's got package-management even after it's up and running.
  3. People love FreeWRT because it's got a more accessible configurable build system.
  4. People love Tomato because it's red, has a nice interface, solid feature set, is straight forward, and can be caramelized for flavor.
  5. People don't care about HyperWRT anymore because it's kind of old now.
  6. People actually hate SveaSoft despite it being first (good read BTW).

dlamblin

Posted 2009-07-30T17:52:59.857

Reputation: 9 293

2+1 for a great overview of most current alternatives, and for a great writing style while answering well! – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun – 2010-08-23T14:20:45.687

11

I'm running Tomato on my WRT54GL and I love it. It doesn't quite have all the features of DD-WRT but it been rock-solid and still has all the essential features, of course including port forwarding. It has a nice AJAX interface that can show you your bandwidth usage, has good QoS controls, lets you control tons of aspects of your wireless (many types of security, antenna power, etc). I'd definitely recommend it.

jtb

Posted 2009-07-30T17:52:59.857

Reputation: 2 115

2+1 Tomato, fully agree. Was the first custom firmware I tried on my WRT54GL. Never seen any reason to try anything else. – Joakim Elofsson – 2009-07-30T18:13:21.743

Another Tomato fan here. I've tried a few different firmware, but tomato does everything I need, and better than most. Also I found the stock firmware wouldn't correctly reconnect a pppoe connection, tomato does this flawlessly. – John Sinclair – 2009-12-01T01:40:27.437

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http://www.dd-wrt.com/

You can see your router in the list of compatible routers at:

http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/dd-wrt/hardware.html

Troggy

Posted 2009-07-30T17:52:59.857

Reputation: 10 191

1Some people find this to be much too commercially oriented to be the right answer. – dlamblin – 2009-08-05T07:24:45.163

That is true. I learned about a few others out there from the other responces thanks to this question. – Troggy – 2009-08-05T14:24:47.827

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It's my understanding that OpenWRT and FreeWRT are the leaders of the pack at the moment. FreeWRT being designed to be more user-friendly than the others.

jweede

Posted 2009-07-30T17:52:59.857

Reputation: 6 325

1

You might want to check out X-wrt. It's Open-wrt with a graphical interface. The current release of Open-Wrt (and therefore X-wrt) is Kamikaze. Also woth considering is [freifunk]. It's Open-wrt White Russian with an interface and controls designed for a community mesh.

d-cubed

Posted 2009-07-30T17:52:59.857

Reputation: 259

Asked: 2009-07-30T17:52:59.857

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Active: 2019-01-29T19:00:34.490