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I've been quite happy with openLEDE. First installed it about a year ago on an $18 tplink router at fry's.
They were so cheap I bought two. LEDE had a patch up 2 days after KRACK was announced.
Do read the hardware compatibility list carefully. I got a v11 of my router that luckily worked under the v10 image.
I researched the hell out of the SOC & hardware, saw they were the same between 10 & 11, and rolled the dice. "Official"
v11 support was added shortly after that. Open WRT's site is a fragemented mess, but has good info if you are patient enough
to find it. LEDE's docs are much more organized. I first installed openWRT but ultimately moved over to LEDE quickly because
it seemed like that project was the one that was going to survive long term.
On another note, for an embedded system, LEDE/WRT are very slack-like at the command line. Very logical layout too, within the
limitations that an embedded environment imposes, just like Slack.
Do note the minimum memory/space requirements. My home routers meet the minimum and space is tight. I mean tight. For light home use, I've been
quite happy with LEDE. Runs great on a low end, minimum spec router, but it's a bare bones install. Some of the extras that are possible
with more memory are pretty neat, but I'll save those for a later time. Overall size grows a bit with each new release, but having seen 3 releases
so far, I think I'll be good for the next 8 years or so. Not bad economy for an $18 router. By the time it's EOL, the $300 routers will cost $25.
It is nice to have CLI & text file configs for your router instead of clunky web interfaces that hide what's going on. Install was easy
and low stress, but do your research and read everything twice or three times before you execute. Make sure the hardware is truly supported.
No "Hail Mary's", and it should go very easy. Nice to not have to throw away routers quite so much as in former eras. Maintenance upgrades are
trivial. They release about 2-3 times a year.
Also research the bootloader- also in the site docs for each router. Some manufacturers choose bootloaders that are difficult to work with because they don't want the consumer tampering with the factory firmware. One difference between v10 & v11 of the router I went with was exactly this- they changed the
factory web interface so that you could not upload non-factory images via the web interface, but there was a TFTP technique that was trivial (a capbility built into the bootloader, probably for factory use) and bypassed the lockout BS they integrated into the factory web interface/rom. A bit like rooting a smartphone- a one time thing, then you are done, and you can upgrade your routers rather than toss them every 3-4 years. In my case there was no way to know about the bootloader issue before purchase. Even on the best of days the field has it's hidden gotchas, but once you get it working one time, it's good to go forever.
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