I agree, or even something like openwrt. This was just to see if it could be done, it’s not the most practical OS for the hardware but it runs pretty well!
Yeah, I encountered this. Repurposed my Netgear WNR1000 v2 with OpenWrt to act as a bridge to connect wired devices to my network. While it has served this role flawlessly for 5+ years, it's frozen in time running an old kernel. The write-up as to why they had to drop support is a good read. [1]