tentacles9999

For 2 gig internet you will likely need something more powerful, especially if you plan on doing much with your router (like using cake qos). The other challenge is finding a network card that works with 2.5 gb Ethernet. It is relatively easy to find a network card that works at 1G or 10G, but the 2.5G Ethernet cards tend to have issues (I have not personally had issues but forums are full of people having issues with the intel nic cards, even though intel networking cards tend to be recommended generally).

What I ended up getting ( don’t have 2.5G internet speeds, just wanted to mess around with it) was a n100 mini pc from Aliexpress. Serve the home has pretty good recommendations for hardware, and I followed their advice. They also had recommendations for switches that support 2.5G.

Here are the links:

https://www.servethehome.com/the-ultimate-cheap-2-5gbe-switch-mega-round-up-buyers-guide-qnap-netgear-hasivo-mokerlink-trendnet-zyxel-tp-link/

https://www.servethehome.com/fanless-intel-n100-firewall-and-virtualization-appliance-review/

As a note, upgrading openwrt on a x86 systems such as a n100 mini pc can be annoying (but doable) especially when upgrading between major versions.

Also I highly recommend posting questions on the openwrt forums as the users there are super helpful, including to users asking questions about what hardware setups are good. It may be a good idea just to get some more perspectives/opinions. Link: https://forum.openwrt.org/

Something that hasn’t been mentioned yet is that open wrt works on cheap devices (check compatibility first) including in all in one router / ap combos. For home use, the most likely used feature will be cake qos which will make a difference even without crazy speeds. Though anything that gives security updates is an upgrade from generic consumer routers

Arch is not basically gentoo. Gentoo is about as close as you can get to vanilla Linux while still being a distro. Arch is pretty opinionated about what defaults should run, gentoo is explicitly flexible. Also the compiling on gentoo thing really needs to stop, there have been binary kernel packages for ages, even before the recent improvement to binary packages. The gentoo installation in someways is easier than the arch installation, as long as you use defaults and customize after first booting up, and if you really want to customize stuff, portage is an absolute beast.

With binary packages it’s actually doable on a laptop. Also newer laptops have tons of low power cores which are great for something highly parallel like compiling.

I wish gentoo was more explored, I felt the same way and then it finally scratched the itch of things working (perhaps even too many options). I actually ended up using gentoo because it was less of a headache to just get things to work in a way that does not feel hacky

May I introduce you to our lord and savior portage?

Just have to wait until cat 9 comes out with gravitational lensing

Yeah, and you need systemd to read the binary logs. Though I think there may be a setting to change to text logs, I am not sure because I avoid systemd when I can

Still boggles my mind that systemd being terrible is still a debate. Like of all things, wouldn’t text logs make sense?

Transferring the house early cannot be overstated. You may have to pay whatever tax, but, it may reduce so many headaches

Hey, there a couple of Linux users here too!

For research studies you are unironically required to write consent forms so a middle schooler can understand them because that’s the average level of comprehension in the USA