Linux 5.17 Mainlines Support For More Obsolete MIPS-Based Wireless Routers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.17 Mainlines Support For More Obsolete MIPS-Based Wireless Routers

While the MIPS CPU architecture itself is at the end of the road, kernel developers still are busy with MIPS considering the Loongson hardware that is popular in China and lots of older MIPS hardware out there lacking mainline Linux kernel support. For Linux 5.17 several more older, consumer-grade network routers are seeing mainline support...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.17-MIPS

[Zgembo]

The only reason any of such MIPS devices may seem "obsolete" is because their vendors are working hard on making them so, by not giving a damn about releasing firmware updates. Thanks to projects like OpenWrt, these devices are finding their new life, serving as cheap, secure and fully configurable WiFi routers, instead of ending up in a landfill. Upstreaming support for something that is actively being used always make sense, no matter how late.

[sverris]

Vote for Headline: 'Linux 5.17 Mainlines Support To Deobsolate More MIPS-Based Wireless Routers'

[sinepgib]

Vote for Headline: 'Linux 5.17 Mainlines Support To Deobsolate More MIPS-Based Wireless Routers'

I'd like to coin the term "reprecate" here. Because why not.

[edwaleni]

I had a ton of these consumer routers and for the most part they have all failed electrically. Blown caps, bad VRM, burned out PHY on the WAN port, or just inconsistent operating behavior, the list goes on. So if the mainline supports it, great, but much of this hardware hit the trash bins awhile back.

[Quackdoc]

always love to see support for low power always on hardware like this, if the end user can mod them and do what they want with them, it can save a lot of them from the trashheap, and maybe even save some people a couple bucks here and there

[sinepgib]

I had a ton of these consumer routers and for the most part they have all failed electrically. Blown caps, bad VRM, burned out PHY on the WAN port, or just inconsistent operating behavior, the list goes on. So if the mainline supports it, great, but much of this hardware hit the trash bins awhile back.

I should check, but most of my routers are quite old, so there's a big chance they're these old MIPS. Only the ISP provided ones are likely relatively new. Not contradicting you, just pointing out YMMV.

Regarding caps, I guess those can be replaced at a fraction of the economic and environmental cost of buying a new router. The other components are probably much more complex.