Slashdot Mirror
Linksys Adds Linux WRT54G Model Back
Glenn Fleishman writes "Last month, Slashdot and others wrote about how the Linksys WRT54G, a popular embedded Linux-based Wi-Fi gateway, had switched to VxWorks's OS for its v5 release. Because the WRT54G has become the standard as a cheap commodity device for building your own platform (like Sveasoft, Fon, and many others), this seemed like a big blow to hackers and developers. If you could still manage to flash the device--not sure if that was possible--it had half the RAM and flash of the v4 model. It turns out Linksys wasn't killing the Linux model. They've released it as the WRT54GL with v4.30.0(US) firmware and will sell it under that name for about $70 retail. It's already in stock and the new firmware is on their GPL software download page. Linux sales represent a few percentage points of their overall volume, based on the Linksys product director's remarks. The lesser quantity of RAM puts money back in their pockets on the mainstream model."
I have a WRT54GS and love having OpenWRT on it instead of their firmware! Having Linux on your router is very nice!
Are you sure this one runs Linux?
My WiFi router died so I started investigating the hackable WRT54G but learned that the new version was no longer Linux based. I'm glad I won't have to go digging for a used v4 somewhere.
I have a v3.3 sitting right beside me. What's the difference between v3.3 and v4?
I've used different firmwares for these devices. It's really nice to be able to configure different things that Linksys wouldn't normally allow you to do, but why get all charged up because it's Linux.
.. throw in 2 NE2000 (or similar) ISA based NICs (you've probably thrown them away before .. I have). Then you have a very VERY useful firewall, that DOES a helluva lot more than these little failure prone Linksys devices.
Can you run an MTA on it? An X server? And if you could, why? Doesn't that go against the "let the firewall be the firewall and not host a bunch of other crap on it"?
If you really wanted a good, cheap firewall, check out Smoothwall. Get a $10 crappy PC
And yes, I used to love the Linksys hardware, but now I have a pile of dead ones from my clients and from personal use. Smoothwall is running and -ZERO- failures as of yet.
= Grow a brain...
I believe that this was stated in the comments of the previous slashdot post Linksys WRT54G drops Linux. I'm glad that the rumors have come true on this one.
better (likely) represented by the fact that
anyone who buys the more expensive model is 90% more likely to load their own firmware *since that is the market it's for*
and Linksys will be a whole lot less responsive to people making warranty claims when they fuckup the firmware flash.
calling tech support and saying "I dunno" what happened is not gonna cut it on these models.. void the warranty, no service for you...
that will undoubtedly keep a few bucks in their pockets from less repairs....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I spent a lot of time working with SveaSoft's images. In general, if you have a old linksys floating around, it's a pretty good way to go. The time requirements for setting things up is non-trivial. This is especially true if you want to do anything sophisticated, ie, bridging, WDS or strange NAT tricks.
I am surprised CISCO doesn't do their own Linux adaptation for these boxes. I had no idea they were so popular that they actually would consider a different model for them.
Strangly QoS does not work very well with the latest versions from SveaSoft, as well as SveaSoft now locking downloads to a particular MAC address. I also had trouble getting the newer firmware (Talisman) to work cleanly with my box. I ended up buying a D-Link Gamer Wireless router and things just worked well. Having built in 1GBPS ethernet, QoS without the configuration headaches of OpenWRT and Linksys was cool. As with all opensource, it's only free if your time is worthless.
Linksys continues to impress. They had a bit of false start when they didn't get the GPL Code out there, but I would say they have really been trying to be good since then.
Re-releasing this marked as a Linux device should be commended. Not only are they selling something that they know people have the intent to modify (which is rare in this day and age), but they are also making it noticable that it runs Linux.
I wish more companies would sell things and be ok with people modifying what they paid money for (MS, Sony, Apple, MPAA,...)
Mentioning percentage of sales with Linux components sounds odd, since until now, their entire line of 54G/GS routers have been embedded Linux, and flash-capable with 3rd party firmware (at least as far back as I've been messing with them). The real numbers will start to show now that they've split the lines between 54G and 54GL...Guess we'll see. I've got three 54GS units running a WDS network (Talisman code) covering about 4 acres between my family members, and it's great. Planning on adding a 15db gain antenna and another unit hopefully very soon...Freedom to do what you want is golden. Hats off to Linksys for allowing it on their hardware.
The Windows live.com tune up (Jiphy lube) site scanned and removed a virus -
I'm running XP SP2 in a VM so it's cool but it whacked Kazaa lite. Tee Hee.
This is gonna be fun.
Anyone know about the possibility of running other operating systems such as OpenBSD on these? Is there any other ports except Linux?
One of the reasons I've always used linux boxes instead of router devices, is because when something isn't right - it's rather easy to log on to the Linux box and run utilities to try and find out what's going on. It also allows allows more flexability on things like source based routing, custom DHCP, custom firewall/masquerading rules, load balancing, and traffic shaping.
This changes the rules, and is very exciting - I can alreay anticipate a whole new generation of hacks coming out that add everything from spam filtering to DNS servers.
Most of us know that the WRT54GS had 16MB flash and 32RAM. This made it a powerfull device that could be outfitted with all the addons making it rival a 600$ router from CISCO (mother of Linksys) therefor killing higher product sales.
:S
We also know, that besides the flash and RAM size difference, there was no other difference between the G and GS versions.
Linksys(or Cisco) decided however in the GS v.4 to castrate it to half the RAM and flash and sell it at the same freaking price as previous versions !! So there was no advantage to buy the GS version instead of the G version ( 60$ instead of 100$).
So pple said, screw the GS, let's go for the G. Well well well, not so fast, since they crippled the G v5 to a puny amount of flash and ram : 8M RAM and 2M flash !! that is unusable with linux even if pple figure out a way to somehow flash linux on it !!
So what was linksys's next move ? release a GL version as the old G router and sell it for 20$ more !! Bastards, i tell you.
In conclusion, they're efectively selling 2 devices : the G and the GS with lower specks for both of them, and they are charging us MORE for the G(GL) and the same price for the GS but with HALF the RAM and HALF the flash.
In other words, WE GOT SCRWED and yet the slashdot editor, paints a rather positive spin on this !!
Way to go guys
Adi
I have a WRT54G and I originally purchased it because I heard it was so hackable. However, I haven't dared to touch the firmware, mostly because the thing likes to explode every few hours. This thing will lockup and refuse all traffic going in or out unless I hard reset it. If many people are connected (10 or 12) it drops connections every 2 to 3 minutes. I understand its a remarkable piece of hardware...if it would just do its job. I'm ashamed to say the D-LINK I had worked much better.
There were plenty of 11G routers on sale during Black Friday. You could get a router for $20 or a Router/Client combo for $30. You really need something special if you say you can't afford wireless these days.
On the other hand I can't live without 11a, so I fall into the latter group.
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others. -Groucho Marx
I've always wanted to install Peer Guardian on my router so I don't have to filter it out on the local PC. Has anyone done this?
In the article Dhillon claims that they sell "hundreds of thousands per month" units per month. They expect to sell "about 10,000 Linux models per month [..] if lucky.
Let's assume "hundreds of thousands" means somewhere between 200,000 to 400,000 (if it was lower then it wouldn't be hundreds in pluralis, and if it was higher he would probably say "half a million" since that's more impressive marketing speak).
So the Linux sales as a percentage of total sales should be in the region of between 2.5% and 5%. That is pretty impressive and much more than I expected. I guess most of the guys "modding" their routers to run Linux are already Linux users. It is probably safe to assume that the modding Linux community is a subset of the total Linux community. That would in turn imply that the size of the Linux community is bigger than 2.5% - 5% of the total Internet community. Could that really be the case?
It's a good deal that Linksys is releasing the WRG54GL... I'm glad to hear it.
Do be careful to not get a WRT54Gv5 though without doing research as to it's current state..as it is, it is NOT just like a WRT54Gv1-4 with stock firmware. It looks the same both physically and in the web page config as the older WRT54G, but it sure doesn't act like it.. Maybe Linksys'll get VXworks running on it properly, but as it is the unit I got had 1.00.0 firmware (never a great sign..) It was unusably buggy.. like, certain config screens randomly "forget" settings, only like 2 out of the 4 wireless cards I have around would even associate with the AP, and the SES (an autoconfig thing to set the channel to a clear one, set a unique SSID, and set a secure WEP or WPA key for you) would just kick in when it feels like, wiping out the SSID and WEP settings already entered into the unit. The "disable SES" checkbox unchecks when going through the config menus and then it's easy to trigger SES by mistake, by either bumping the front button, or hitting the very large "SES" button on the one config page where "Apply" usually is..
I updated to 1.00.2 (current firmware) and it's got the same issues.. it allowed 1 non-working card to associate, but 1 that did work with 1.00.0 didn't connect with 1.00.2.. I returned it after waiting a bit for a 1.00.3 firmware and have a Netgear access point now.
I bought the WRT54G ver 1.1 because of its hackability, at the time I was using a Microsoft router (I got it for $10, so I used that) but I bought the Linksys because of the neato factor. Then, I ended up ditching the MS router, because the Linksys with updated firmware is just the bomb. I told all my friends, one, a consultant, began buying WRT54G's for his customers because he could remote SSH into them and open ports etc to maintain their systems. It gave all kinds of flexibility.
.22
:p
I reccomended this model to everyone I knew - we use them at work now, and employees at work have bought them now on my reccomendation. I sent linksys an email thanking them for the GPLed version, and letting Linksys know I was reccomending this model to people.
I was dissapointed with the recent story of the non-linux version, however, with the release of the GL version, I am very impressed by Linksys indeed. Yes, it will probably cost a little more due to the better ram, but hey, I WANT the better ram! (Still seriously considering the flashcard hack...)
For those who care, my router runs:
dd-wrt version
WRTBlog
Uses SMB to save information to one of my network machines
Uses SNMP and MRTG (on network machine) to monitor bandwith (on top of bwlog)
These are worthy additions to your WRT. I am considering purchasing another and running kismet on it for wardrivng.
-- So, thank you Linksys, for releasing the source, and maintaining the WRT line.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I have had three Linksys wireless routers and had pretty good luck. However, the v5 I bought a month ago died in less than two days. Fortunately CompUSA exchanged it and the replacement has been working fine.
One nice feature (which unfortunatly didn't work with mine) is the 'Management Mode' It allows you to put the router in a special mode to re-flash, even if the existing firmware is corrupt. Has a bare-bones web interface to upload the file. Handy.
Too bad mainstream appears to also mean 'cheap, unreliable parts' too...
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
It was with clients using Intel's 2915ABG wireless cards. Installing custom firmware and updating the Intel drivers fixed the problem for me. I am currently running Firmware Version : v4.20.9 - HyperWRT 2.1b1+tofu7 on my version 3 WRT54G. I have uptimes of months now without any problems.
The link I meant to post for dd-wrt (IMO the best firmware for the WRT, mostly because of Sevasofts treatment of customers)
http://www.dd-wrt.com/
dd-wrt
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
With 4 MB Flash and 16 MB RAM, this box exceeds the basic resources of many early GUI machines. What stops an enterprising hacker from writing a "Word Processor" for this thing? It could render the interface in HTML (perhaps with a bit of Javascript for highly interactive functions) and use something like a GMail account for persistent storage if one doesn't want to let the Linksys read/write to a PC's filesystem.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
raaaammmooooon
This website has aids
An argueably better and entirely free alternative to Smoothwall is IPCop. Definitely a product worth checking out as there are no "limited" versions and it supports a lot of interesting add ons such as SquidGuard, a midnight commander clone and a time based billing system.
When I purchased the "new" WRT54G, version 5, I expected a router that would at least have better performance than my old, reliable Pentium-II firewall running Windows 2003 and Routing and Remote Services.
Boy was I wrong. Many sites, such as: http://www.tmobile.com/ http://www.realtor.com/ and http://www.gamespot.com/ all had great difficulty loading. It turns out a **LOT** of other people are having the same problem with the Version 5 WRT54G.
My longstanding issue was finally escalated to Linksys Customer Support (you will be escalated to Customer support after dealing with Technical support). At Customer Support, they RMA'd my v5 router, and replaced it with a v4 router. I demanded that they replace it with a v4 router, and I noted that a *LOT* of people on this bulletin board are having the EXACT same problem.
I have literally spent hours trying to solve this problem on the v5 router. As soon as I plugged the v4 router in, my problems were solved!
Of course, Linksys being a company that enjoys wasting their customers' time by not even admitting a problem, you will be forced to pay for shipping charges. No matter that the item is clearly flawed by engineering defects to begin with. I will never, ever, consider buying a Linksys in the future. What a mistake I made thinking they were a premium brand. The fact that they are going to sell a version that finally works as it should, under a different model number and at a higher price, rather than fix the WRT54G Version 5 tells me that they are not interested in providing a quality product. I hope their strategy blows up in their face!
I just junked my WRT54G v2 for another manufacturer. The WRT54G has a habit of dying due to BitTorrent traffic.
but does it run Linux?
Best Free Utilities for Windows
Linksys - keep up the good philosophy, and I suspect you could become the IBM-PC-like-standard of consumer appliances that anyone's software can run on.
I have always wondered why people who buy the WRT54G to run customized firmwares don't show as much interest as in similar embedded platforms, which are in the same price range ($70 to $130), have a similar or superior hardware config [1], and allow a similar level of customization. So why the WRT54G interest you, but not those embedded platforms ?
[1] Actually those platforms even seem more attractive (faster CPU, more RAM, bluetooth, MMC, etc), the only downside is that, of course, they don't provide 5 ethernet ports, but only 1 or 2.but can it run linu-- oh wait..
This particular real-world test case tells us that you can get rid of Linux and cut your flash and SDRAM requirements in half. (And vxWorks is pretty bloated by comparison to other RTOSes, at that. Their old platform was bested not by the leanest commercial competitor, but the fattest.)
Even with Wind River's per-unit royalties and upfront charges, Linksys finds it necessary to avoid the "free" OS to reduce cost.
The deals are out there. You just have to know what you're looking for.
I can't say I disagree with you, but as I work for a semiconductor manufacturer, I would like to expand on what 'unreliable' means in this case.
Actually, most consumer electronics devices are 'unreliable' in the sense that they experience relatively high failure rates (compared to, say, telecommunications infrastructure devices). This is a result of the (lack of) burn in done before the parts are deployed. Simply stated, it is cheaper to have consumer electronics fail in the field than to burn in all of the parts before-hand. This is not unique to Linksys.
Consumer devices are generally 250 FIT or higher for early failure rate [first year]. A FIT (failure in time) is the ratio of failed devices (in parts per million) to running time (in thousands of power on hours [kpoh])... so 250 FITS translates into 2500 parts per million (ppm) failing after 10 kpoh. That's really reasonable for consumer devices (0.25% failure in the first year). The average failure rate over the life of the consumer semiconductor (probably rated for 100K or 200K poh) is around 100 FITS.
As a side note, telecommunications devices are generally a higher standard, with early failure rate below 65 FIT and average failure rate below 25 FIT. The burn-in required to reduce the failure rate (since most of the failures occur early in the lifecycle, stress testing a part early on can trigger many of the early failures) costs a bundle of money, and can add enough expense to a part to eliminate the entire profit margin on a consumer device. Of course, for more important applications (telecom, brake systems in vehicles, medical equipment), higher reliability parts are used.
So yes, 'mainstream' (actually 'low margin and low risk in case of failure') does mean lower quality, but please don't bash the manufacturers too hard for it. Economics forces their hand, and the result is the system that is set up to take the returns, as you experienced.
On buy.com, the WRT54GS is actually cheaper than the WRT54GL, and has more RAM and more flash (4mb and 32 mb respectively). Seems kind of lame that they take the same device that used to sell for $45 and jack the price to $70, just to take advantage of the "linux" thing.
So to anyone looking to buy this router, consider the WRT54GS. With more ram and storage, you can do more things with it. All for about the same price.
Also, avoid Sveasoft at all costs. They are slimy. I still haven't been refunded my money after I canceled my automatically-renewing annual protect, I mean firmware access, fee. They promised they would, but a month later and several unanswered e-mails and I'm still out my $20 bucks. Next week I'll lodge a complaint with paypal.
For the best capabilities, use openwrt. it rocks! I've done so much more with it than I did with sveasoft, thanks to having a small writable partition to place scripts and so forth, instead of just having to use the nvram.
So, first they sabotage their $40 WRT54G model by making it impossible to buy a "good" version with any certainty unless you're physically holding the box to check the serial number. I can't buy one online now, because I have no idea if I'll get stuck with a v5. Then they re-release the old model, but with a price tag that's $30 higher? Brilliant.
Why create an unnecessary point of discontinuity in the product line? They should have kept linux on the WRT54G, and called the VxWorks model the "WRT54GSUX".
CompUSA had Wireless-G routers and USB, PCMCIA, and PCI wireless receivers for $2.99 each after rebate.
That's pronounced Com-POOZA.
$2.99 is expensive, I thought. These days I expect to get something free after rebate, or actually be paid to take something. *grin*
If ever you don't get a rebate, call them up and use the F word. Fraud. That causes low-paid rebate center employees to quit, and costs the fraudsters money to hire someone else.
Sorry, that's Com-POO-za
The price on these things has dropped as they halved the RAM and Flash. Basically, they now have two models where they had one: a cheaper version and the one we all know and love, they just gave the name to the cheaper one and added an "L" to make the fancier one sound better than last years model.
I have a WRT54GS v3.0, got it on rebate for $30 off. I made sure that I had the right version by using serial number ranges from http://www.linksysinfo.org/modules.php?name=Conten t&pa=showpage&pid=6
The latest GS version v4.0 has half the ram (4 & 16 instead of 8 and 32), but the store had mine and even a few 2.0 models mixed in for those who bothered to check the serial on the outside of the box.
I am running dd-rt v.23 right now, because it is free AND very easy to use, as well as modular (uses ipkg capabilities from openwrt). OpenWRT probably does more but needs more setup. I have been playing with the extra features, checking out all the software people like to use, and enjoying connecting via command line to check and change stuff in addition to browser access.
The G model was also on rebate, for a little less, but again the latest version isnt as good, in fact G version 5.0 doesnt use Linux, and getting a lower model revision required reading a lot of boxes (*or letting the store employees help-- I chased off 3 before I decided to let them help read serials after all)
William
You know, if they build a device much like the network attached storage (NSLU2whatever) device and shipped it with a decent amount of ram GEEKS LIKE ME WOULD FLOCK TO IT.
My ability to do cool things with their products is the ONLY reason I ever purchased it. Twice.
Not only are the systems you suggest nearly twice the price of the Linksys, in six months the price of the Linksys will be even less. And three years from now, when the current wireless standard goes away to be replaced with another, I can pick up a Linksys for almost nothing and use it for something more useful than filling a trash dump.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Well, I have a D-Link and I wish I had bought the Linksys. It locks up every 10 minutes or so (with only one user). If two people use it the range drops drastically and it locks up more often. If I enable their proprietary "turbo" mode it doesn't lock up nearly as often, but then I am forced to use a specific channel which happens to be very congested in my neighborhood so I get terrible performance.
:)
If I could run Linux on it I would in "a flash"
The lack of IPv6 on consumer routers is the single greatest hurdle to wider IPv6 adoption.
Imagine for a moment if
Suddenly all machines behind all of those users have globally unique IPv6 addresses. The easy P2P access that is suddenly available would revolutionize the Internet and light a fire under IPv6. Sadly there is no immediate profit for the NAT/firewall/router vendors in it, and this firmware change represents a sad step in the wrong direction such that - even if a killer app came out for IPv6 that made this desirable - the possibilty of providing an easy IPv6 upgrade for the average users' NAT frouters is now dissolving.
(Duh, why does /. display my "Preview Comment" thing in this fancy shmancy box now? What was wrong with the old way, where it was simply displayed, followed by the edit field? No, now there's this box and half a screenful of Name, URL, Subject... blah blah blah... The old way was better.)
A lot of people, including myself, were deploying these units everywhere for all types of business use.
Things were getting a little squeezy because although hacking the unit was legal, not having Linksys officially 'bless' the process meant that at anytime they could change the floor beneath you.. making dramatic changes to the hardware in the next rev.. leaving everyone stranded. That seemed to be the direction Linksys was going in.
This new release of the hardware shows that Linksys is giving an official blessing to the whole proceeding.. I can deploy these things into the wild for myself and my customers with more confidence that this product line has a longer life.
BZZT. Wrong.
There is force that exists, and people are being screwed. When "free to exploit the consumer markets" exist, and the practical choice (in this case, the pre-modifed Linux WRT54G/GS) is modified against the consumer's wishes in a deceptive manner, they are being screwed.
Exploitative economics is not a defense to mess with your customer. The deception by introducing the linux model later (by fully knowing of those who mod this would avoid the "standard" model if the linux one was there first) is further proof.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This is one of those awesome posts where the entire blurb, article, and every comment are absolutely indecipherable to me.
See subject.
I looked into it, and the ease of use of it, along with the feature set, (comparison here) pushed me into going ahead and buying a rev3 WRT54GS. Anyway, here is the link.
I don't know if they change the source code they distribute, but last time I check there were file with uncompatible with GPL in the kernel tree : there were lot's of confidential license from boradcom and AMD (for the flash). Not to say that most device needs binary driver (ethernet, wifi, ...).
So it isn't realy free Software and buying them encorage vendor to release only the minimun.
No to say the source code were released because people claimed about GPL violation...
Weird. I have version 5 and have none of these problems. I didn't even know it didn't run Linux any longer. I know, lazy Slashdot reader, I am.
I just installed it and bricked my v2 router after fooling around with it for a few minutes. Thanks, I needed that.
Why linksys would be agains linux distributions? Linksys is selling hardware. Why would they care how you use it? From their point of view it doesn't matter. If you don't use their software, better for them because they get less service calls, less customer support.
So I don't see any interest for linksys to stop producing a platform that people want to buy. If they managed to port their system to vxworks and not it requires 1/2 memory and flash, it is worth to save money on hardware, but it does not mean that they should stop producing something that people want to buy.
So bottom line, it make sence to sell both old hardware and new hardware.
This doesn't reflect Linux as a trend, this is something the average Linux user probably won't be doing.
It's the people who look at something like this and ask "Hmmm... just what can I do with a low-powered Linux box that's k3w1?" who buy it.
But even at that, 120K units a year for a premium-priced box for hardware h4xx0rs is amazing.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Apart from memory, a CPU and connectivity, what does a thin client need? Right, you missed keyboard and monitor adapters. Your proposal sounds more like a thin client than a thin server.
Could be interesting nevertheless, but it's just something different. A thin server should rather provide a small (public) HTML server, printer, DHCP, NTP, authentification, VPN - the usual stuff. For bittorrent, SAMBA/NFS storage, POP/IMAP or any other meaningful server task, you need ata/scsi periferals.
When Linksys started shipping v5, we switched to Asus WL-500G Deluxe. It has 32MB RAM, 2xUSB and (almost) ready-to-use COM-port. The only problem is small flash memory. I had to build a very custom OpenWRT image. Asus WL-500G Deluxe is more engineer-friendly than Linksys.
If memory serves, most of these home routers are running on MIPS based hardware. There is no port of OpenBSD to the sbmips platform (yes there is an SGI MIPS port but I doubt it is similar enough for an easy transition). I believe NetBSD has been ported to this platform but I am unsure of whether the supported chipset is the same as that in a home router. There's also the possiblity that there won't be wifi card or ethernet drivers on NetBSD so you would have to reverse engineer those... Personally I'd just stick with Linux but porting a *BSD for full support would be an interesting exercise.
As another poster said, if you want to run OpenBSD on embedded hardware you are better off going for the soekris stuff but you'll pay a LOT more (prices for just the board without case, wifi card or power cable start at $128) than for the shelf consumer stuff (Amazon has a WRT54 for $54.99).
I've seen Sofa King many dead and defective Linksys wireless routers that you couldn't give me one.
In fact, I have nine Linksys 802.11b routers in my garage -- six of them still in the shrink wrap -- that I'd be willing to give you.
Now if they would just would wire and finish the serial ports, and add POE ... nobody would ever buy Cisco's entperprise hardware.
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
This is slightly off-topic, but since the WRT54G is a hackable router, is there any way to make it act like a wireless-ethernet bridge? (Much like the WET54GS5). This way, I could simply purchase one device (the WRT54G) and configure it to act one way or the other.
Titus Barik
I'm glad they have essentially resumed production of the Linux version. It's a good sign that they are concerned with their customers' demands.
But if they are going to make a Linux version, then it's a fairly foregone conclusion that people intend to hack on it. They should, therefore, make it more hack-friendly in the process. Add a CF slot to the device! Mark it up accordingly as I am sure people will buy the heck out of those.
I've had Linksys's own firmware re-flashing fail for reasons not apparent to me. I know what I'm doing, I've done many of the firmware upgrades, I read the readme, yet I have two VP41 and one SX41 sitting here that were working fine before the firmware upgrade, yet died immediately when I flashed them. Out of warranty, so now I own some bricks. Isn't there some JTAG method of repairing these?
Curator of the Jefferson Computer Museum http://www.threedee.com/jcm
Okay, I have to admit, I don't get this. When we used VxWorks (1996, when embedded Linux wasn't available for the PPC 6U VME board we had), the development system for it set us back somewhere between $30,000-50,000, and there were per-unit royalties we had to pay. We only had to build a couple, so the $10/unit in royalties didn't hurt much... but how does that get cheaper than Linux, which has no royalties?
Oh, and one of the reasons we moved from VxWorks to Linux? Well, who wants to pay another $60,000 or so and have to deal with an NDA to get the source to fix their bugs for them?
Of course, VxWorks is better than Linux for the hard real-time stuff, when you need hard priorities and deterministic timing. But for that stuff, we use eCos.
All of these units are based on the broadcom "airforce" reference design. Instead of having to purchase a Linksys or ASUS I would actually prefer to just be able to purchase the reference design from broadcom or have some one like gumstix manufacture this reference design "specifically to support Linux hacking". Here is the link to broadcom site http://www.broadcom.com/products/Wireless-LAN/802. 11-Wireless-LAN-Solutions. So someone could partner with a group like OpenWRT and sell them. This should not be to hard to do with the current offerings of cm, like flextronics.
Just in case anyone else was curious, here is there price list in USD (they are a Swiss outfit):
http://www.pcengines.ch/order1.php?c=4
Short version:
2 LAN / 2 miniPCI / 128MB = $130
3 LAN / 1 miniPCI / 128MB = $136
1 LAN / 2 miniPCI / 64 MB = $115
1 LAN / 2 miniPCI / 128MB = $122
Not bad, actually. Although if you have the space, you can get a surplus 1U rackmount server for not much more than that, as I recently found out.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
OK, I officially mediawiki too much. Please allow me to rephrase:
Then I swapped it for an 2915ABG, which is natively supported in Linux just fine.
Of the fact that they have split off the 'linux' hackable version from the mainstream consumer model. Linux has always thrived on cheap commodity hardware. That is, Linux is a niche market that integrates well, in a lot of cases, as a subset of a large market, and the large market keeps prices low and products in production for the niche Linux users.
While I think it's cool that Linksys has at least made the option available, currently, to buy basically the 'older' model that is hackable and runs Linux, I wonder how long this will last? If it's true that the Linux hacker sales only account for a very small percent of the overall sales, will Linksys consider it worthwhile, in the long run, to continue to market the seperate product?
I suppose that depends on a few things - if some companies spring up that use the WRT54GL to create other products for resale to a mainstream market (for example, selling small-office wireless PBX's using Asterix on one of these devices - and I think there might be companies doing things like this), perhaps this secondary market would be large enough to justify the continued production of these units.
This kind of reminds me of the Corel Netwinder. I don't know how many people remember the netwinder. For some reason Corel (you know, the makers of WordPerfect and CorelDraw), in it's history, has experimented with various other businesses, including being a Linux Distro vendor for about 5 minutes (anyone ever try Corel Linux? It was based on Debian, but there was only ever one release that I know of), and before that, they tried creating a small, arm-based Linux computer.
It was a nice design - extremely compact, quite - really it was about the size of most WAPs in it's physical form-factor, and had a very visually pleasing case design. I think Corel eventually split the netwinder off as a seperate company, which I think struggled along until May of 2005 (the current status of netwinder seems to be a little fuzzy to me - based on a google search, it apepars that as recently as May of 2005, there was a company continuing to develop and sell small Linux-based hardware under the Netwinder name).
The netwinder was a very cool device, but unfortunately, I don't think there was enough market for it, as it targetted people who wanted small, relatively cheap, low-end Linux servers and workstations - but alot of that same market just bought intel or amd based commodity hardware (tower servers, rack servers, blade servers, etc). Linux thrives as a being a subset of a large market, not as a seperate niche market.
... according to the openwrt site, the linksys wrt54g 5.0 comes with half the ram and flash of the 4.0 model (and other prior models). That could explain the cost difference.
Also, the wrt54gs looks more interesting, it has 8mb flash / 32mb ram...
Fuck your flamebait. The parent was flamebait. I was flaming him. That should rightly be (+3, Flaming the Asshole Flamebaiter You Myopic Bastards). I am metamodding you into oblivion inside my head.
Can you put Linux on the WRT54GC? It's the compact version of the WRT54G but I do not think that it currently runs Linux at all (the F/W download page has the GPL Code button all grayed out.) Anybody knows what this model really runs?
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Can anyone tell me if there is an ADSL variant of the WRT54GL?
The alchemy firmware for the wrt54g is excellent and free. The firmware includes a pptp server as well as other high end functions. We use the pptp server for our edge network here at lightspoke
Lightspoke Web Based Database