> Those are only mistakes if you ignore the realities of what hardware is available.

If you think the focus should be on what hardware is available, then why make a OpenWrt Two instead of buying the existing hardware?

> A highly-integrated SoC designed specifically for wireless router usage is a more cost-effective platform than a generic x86 PC.

This is exactly why OpenWrt One and probably Two too is just e-waste - because those cheap integrated hardware platforms are e-waste to begin with. They are indeed cost-effective, but only for a brief moment in time.

Wifi drivers are one of the most problematic part of linux kernel. Also, wifi standards are still changing very fast. Non-replaceable wifi is one of the things that's going to kill these boards.

OpenWrt One can only be used as a wireless router. There's no storage, no expansion slots, not even USB3. It can't be repurposed, can't be upgraded, can't even be used as an ordinary ethernet router because there's no switch. In less than a year, OpenWrt Two makes it obsolete. OpenWrt Two won't be any different, so why make it at all? What will that improve? There's tons of boards better than that (BananaPi R-series, GLinet routers).

So that's basically my argument.

(I didn't complain about the CPU. The CPU is probably the most future-proof component in there. Using x86 CPU is probably the worst design decision they could make.)

> Adding SATA controllers to a WiFi router SoC does not benefit Netgear, et al.

So what? That's what PCIe is for (and expansion slots).

Turris Omnia is almost 10 YEARS old and it's still being sold, and at outrageous prices, mind you, even second-hand. It's CPU is obsolete, it's miniPCIe slots are obsolete, it's ethernet is (almost) obsolete, it's memory is barely sufficient, and yet it's still usable as a home router, personal web server, file server, NAS, torrent client, remote download manager, TOR node, proxy, etc. etc. after 9 years! Why is that? Because Wifi was replaceable and it had 2GB RAM at a time when most routers only had 32MB.

Beat that, OpenWrt One&Two!

> A focus on the kind of modular, expandable and upgradable hardware platforms that actually currently exist (namely, PCs) is what leads to the distractions you're complaining about: "video acceleration, mesa, X, wayland, Doom, etc."

No, that's not it. A mini-PCIe / M.2 slot won't fit a GPU (well, it could, but...). A SO-DIMM slot instead of soldered memory also won't change anything. Meanwhile, GPUs are already there in most SoCs supported by OpenWrt, not just x86: Rockchip, Mediatek, Broadcom/RaspberryPi, you name it.

If devs were interested in GPU support, they could have contributed to Buildroot instead. Why did they add it to OpenWrt instead of Buildroot? Probably because it was easy: they're the main devs of OpenWrt with commit privileges. I'm not saying that they abused those privileges. I'm saying that their interest doesn't seem aligned with what OpenWrt is: an OS for routers.

> modular, expandable and upgradable hardware platforms that actually currently exist (namely, PCs)

And this is the second problem with OpenWrt One/Two. If an OpenWrt dev wanted to have an OpenWrt NAS, or an OpenWrt server of some kind, anythining other than (just) a router, only PCs fit the requirements. Not even Rockchip/BananaPi SBCs. Of course that dev is going to contribute with support for PCs in OpenWrt.