Tomato64 - x86-64 port of the Tomato Firmware Distribution

[sfx2000]

Some folks might find this interesting, as Tomato is the basis for some of the factory firmware distributions (such as AsusWRT)...

Tomato64

tomato64.org

@RMerlin @TheLostSwede - thoughts here?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Used to, no? I believe Asus has stripped out most of that code by now.
That said, all routers have some base firmware that they're built on.
MTK has their own SDK/firmware that is all in-house and at least used to be quite easy to "skin".
Qualcomm seems to have their own custom version of OpenWRT and unless they've changed, they use an older kernel, because reasons...
Broadcom I don't know.
Realtek also has something in-house.

I guess this could be interesting for those that want to try to build their own x86/x64 based routers, but the hard part will be to find suitable WiFi modules that are supported, at least if you're planning on building an integrated device.

 

[sfx2000]

Was interesting to see the recent Belkin GPL drops for their AX3200 device - classic Linksys WRT, and not too terribly far away from Tomato and DD-WRT as branches...

Know that QC and MTK dev kits these days are branches on OpenWRT - mostly because they have to support SDK's across chip gens are archs - everything from MIPS to ARMv7 to aarh64 - OpenWRT/Fork allows that... and pulling in their tasty closed source chocolately river of code...

Realtek - don't know, but I assume it's buildroot on the easy path, or Yocto on the hard path...

Getting back on track - Tomato is/was a fairly efficient platform as 3rd party - so it's fun to see the port.

How it works with other distro's in the same space - it's up to them...

 

[Tvlz]

Anyone willing to try it?

New Port of Tomato64 to the GL.iNet Flint2 (GL-MT6000)

 

[sfx2000]

Used to, no? I believe Asus has stripped out most of that code by now.

Structurally - it hasn't changed much - the Belkin GPL drop for the MediaTek based RT3200 is an evolution of the classic Linksys WRT platform that Tomato forked from the WRT54G, and Asus forked from there.

From a SW architect perspective, it's interesting to see - esp as this code base has been ported on to about every WiFi chipset ever...

Going back to the QC/MTK SDK's - yep, they're both forks based on LEDE/OpenWRT, and they keep things perhaps on an older kernel for maint purposes as they have to support their respective product lines with something that could be rolled into production - they stay away from the bleeding edge kernels that OpenWRT has, but for good reason - they want to ensure that all their middleware drivers and accelerators are stable...

It's kind of nice, as if one is comfortable with QSDK, migrating to the Mediatek SDK is pretty easy as all the upper layer stuff is the same, and the SW workflows are basically the same - with a little effort, one can merge both into build system that supports both vendors.

I've seen that both Qualcomm and Mediatek rebased their SDK's, usually on a technology jump, e.g. moving from WiFi5 to WiFi6, or CPU arch revision, going from MIPS to ARMv7 or ARMv8, and sometimes both...

And just like AsusWRT, we see questions all the time about - "why the old kernel" - well, because - mostly for reliability and stability for the entire platform that the SDK has to support.

fun stuff