Quick Techie Splatter

After changing something on my Linux home router today, I realized I should make a post about the Tomato replacement firmware. Yes, I realize most people have no idea what I'm talking about right now, but for those that do, keep reading.

Tomato is one of many replacement open source firmwares available for the Linksys WRT54G family of access points and routers (among other devices). Most people are familiar with this little ubiquitous device, and many are aware that you can replace the firmware on it thanks to open source software (and some people behind the scenes who poked Linksys until they "did the right thing" with their open source support).

DD-WRT has been one of the most popular of these firmware packages for quite some time. I was a big fan myself. However, a few things began to sour me on it. First and foremost, DD-WRT does a fair job of stepping all over the spirit of open source. Yes, it is technically possible to get the source, but good luck ever figuring out how to get it to build. Moreover, I have seen many (possibly rumored) reports of less than desirable behavior related to the DD-WRT codebase.

Over time, a "subscription" version of the firmware has become available. I see any new features in the future likely only being available to people willing to pay for this, and the free version simply stagnating. This along with the firmware itself having an ever-growing amount of services that bordered on adware made me want to look elsewhere.

It turns out unless you really needed every last knob of DD-WRT, Tomato is both far simpler and equally fully featured. In addition, its hot-set capability for nearly all parameters is very slick.

I won't go into exhausting details feature by feature of the two. I'll suffice it to say that I see no reason why someone wouldn't be equally or more satisfied by using Tomato vs. DD-WRT. A quick Google search of "tomato wrt" brings up others opinions on this subject as well.