I also have been running OpenWRT for over 10 years and I agree, software management is archaic and painful. I exclusively use it for dumb APs now and just use OPNSense upstream to actually manage my network and devices. It’s been pretty nice in that regard for a couple years now.
Seconding this, I do the same. It’s a terrible sign that it took me longer to figure out how to successfully create VLANs and assign them to SSIDs in OpenWRT, which is a fairly simple concept, than it took me to learn basically anything about OPNSense, a vastly more powerful and complex tool.
I appreciate OpenWRT for giving me FOSS firmware I can slap on my AP, and I certainly don’t want to come across as entitled to the free labor of the developers, but it’s just objectively not very good from a UI/UX perspective.
I also have been running OpenWRT for over 10 years and I agree, software management is archaic and painful. I exclusively use it for dumb APs now and just use OPNSense upstream to actually manage my network and devices. It’s been pretty nice in that regard for a couple years now.
Seconding this, I do the same. It’s a terrible sign that it took me longer to figure out how to successfully create VLANs and assign them to SSIDs in OpenWRT, which is a fairly simple concept, than it took me to learn basically anything about OPNSense, a vastly more powerful and complex tool.
I appreciate OpenWRT for giving me FOSS firmware I can slap on my AP, and I certainly don’t want to come across as entitled to the free labor of the developers, but it’s just objectively not very good from a UI/UX perspective.