After more than a year of development, a significant release of the OpenWrt 24.10.0 distribution has been released, developed for network devices such as routers, switches, and access points. OpenWrt supports 1970 devices and offers a build system that simplifies cross-compilation and the creation of custom builds. Such builds allow you to create ready-made firmware with the desired set of pre-installed packages, optimized for specific tasks. Ready-made builds are published for 39 target platforms (the previous branch supported 36 platforms).
Main changes in OpenWrt 24.10:
- TLS 1.3 support is enabled by default, thanks to the mbedtls library update to version 3.6.
- For devices with large Flash memory sizes, support for ACL (POSIX Access Control List) and security attributes has been enabled in all file systems. The change affects devices that do not have the small_flash flag set. Currently, small_flash is specified for the ath79/tiny, bcm47xx/legacy, lantiq/ase, lantiq/xrx200_legacy, lantiq/xway_legacy, ramips/mt76x8, ramips/rt288x, ramips/rt305x, and ramips/rt3883 platforms.
- For devices with large Flash memory sizes, the kernel includes support for MPTCP (MultiPath TCP), an extension of the TCP protocol for delivering TCP packets simultaneously along multiple routes through different network interfaces.
- Improved support for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and added initial support for Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be).
- Improved performance of the lldpd background process with the implementation of the LLDP (Link Layer Discovery Protocol).
- Support for over 100 new devices has been added, with the OpenWrt One wireless router, developed by the OpenWrt community, standing out. The total number of supported devices has reached 1970.
- Added d1 and starfive platforms for devices based on AllWinner D1 and StarFive JH71x0 (7100/7110) SoCs using RISC-V architecture.
- Added ixp4xx platform for Intel XScale IXP4xx SoC based on ARM architecture.
- Added loongarch64 platform for devices with processors based on the LoongArch architecture.
- Added stm32 platform for STMicroelectronics STM32 SoC.
- Removed platforms ath25 (Atheros ieee80211g with 16MB RAM), bcm63xx (Broadcom DSL MIPS, replaced by bmips platform), octeontx (Octeon-TX CN80XX/CN81XX) and oxnas (PLXTECH/Oxford NAS782x/OX8xx). Renamed ipq807x to qualcommax.
- Ready-made assemblies for the qoriq platform (SoC NXP QorIQ based on the PowerPC architecture) have been created.
- The transition of target platforms to the DSA (Distributed Switch Architecture) kernel subsystem, which provides tools for configuring and managing cascades of interconnected Ethernet switches, using mechanisms for configuring conventional network interfaces (iproute2, ifconfig), has been continued. DSA can be used to configure ports and VLANs instead of the previously proposed swconfig tool, but not all switch drivers support DSA yet. In the new release, DSA is enabled for the ipq806x platform (Qualcomm Atheros IPQ806X SoC). Support for the Airoha AN8855 DSA switch (Xiaomi AX3000T, used in Mediatek and Airoha switches) has been added.
- Updated package versions including musl 1.2.5, glibc 2.38, gcc 13.3.0, binutils 2.42, hostapd from September 2024, dnsmasq 2.90, dropbear ssh 2024.86.
- The Linux kernel has been updated to release 6.6.73 with the cfg80211/mac80211 wireless stack ported from kernel 6.12.6. (The previous branch shipped kernel 5.15 with the wireless stack from kernel 6.1).
- Despite the project's migration to the APK package manager, the OpenWrt 24.10 branch continues to use the OPKG package manager. The transition to APK has so far only been implemented in the "main" branch, which will serve as the basis for the next major OpenWrt release.
- When upgrading from the OpenWrt 23.05 branch, Xiaomi AX3200, Redmi AX6S, Linksys E8450, Belkin RT3200 and Zyxel GS1900 devices are experiencing update issues. Users of these devices should take into account separate recommendations.
Source: opennet.ru
