LEDE (Linux Embedded Development Environment) is a fork of OpenWrt after some disagreements between developers, and while there are talks about merging OpenWrt and LEDE development, this is not done yet, and LEDE 17.01 has been released a few days ago.
Some of notable LEDE 17.01 changes include:
- Linux kernel updated to version 4.4.50 (from 3.18 in Chaos Calmer)
- Update to dnsmasq 2.76, busybox 1.25.1, mbedtls 2.4.0, openssl 1.0.2k
- Improved Security Features
- Improved Networking Support
- Added new targets:
- apm821xx (AppliedMicro APM821xx)
- arc770 (Synopsys DesignWare ARC 770D)
- archs38 (Synopsys DesignWare ARC HS38)
- armvirt (QEMU ARM Virtual Machine)
- ipq806x (Qualcomm Atheros IPQ806X)
- layerscape (NXP Layerscape)
- zynq (Xilinx Zynq 7000 SoCs)
- Reorganized x86 target – Drop dedicated Xen DomU target, merged with x86/generic * Enable AES-NI support
- Build system improvements
- Image Builder / SDK – Rework library bundling to allow for better portability between different Linux distributions, added support for building kernel modules using the SDK
You’ll find a complete list of change since the beginning of LEDE project here. There are also some limitations as available space on devices with only 4MB flash is very low, and devices with only 32MB RAM might not be able to reliably run opkg or sysupgrade operations, especially in when LuCI is also running.
Thanks to Hauke for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I didn’t know LEDE. Thanks for mentioning it … maybe it’s better than the current OpenWrt in my router.
@Sander
Comparing both trees, it seems most of the development work has moved to LEDE with the exception of security back-porting:
https://github.com/lede-project/source/graphs/contributors
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/graphs/contributors
So, it depends on how old your hardware is really. Personally, my router is old enough for me not to care.
I believe another significant change between Chaos Calmer and LEDE is the move from uclibc to musl libc.
Just last weekend I installed LEDE 17.01.0-RC2 on my VoCore v1. It’s definitely true about the RAM requirements. The original VoCore has only 32MB of RAM and it would just lock up occasionally when using opkg. Installing and enabling zram-swap seemed to help but I still had it lock up on me. I never had that problem on OpenWRT. I didn’t spend much time on it but it just felt less stable than OpenWRT. However much of this is probably due to the small amount of RAM.
Surprise, surprise!
Thanks for the comment, Justin. I have a couple of Vocors and I’ll wait till someone reports better.
Also bought the new tiny VoCor2 cube.
thanks
Jim
@Justin
Last time I had the problem with openwrt, luci was taking 100% cpu on a wrt54g. Removed Luci and all the GUI stuff, and it was running like a charm.
> Surprise, surprise!
Indeed a surprise, they didn’t even quarrel well enough, and there’re already talks of reunification.