[dtaht]

I too wish that we could easily use everything as an AP. My vision back then was that we would go meshy for everything. For many years I had full adhoc support (babel and batman protocols) and could go from device to device, from ethernet to wifi and back again, without losing a nailed up connection. I couldn't figure out why APs were so popular... the wifi protocol scaled then to 13 miles, now it barely goes behind the couch.

USB is a terrible idea for latency. CARDBUS was so much better. I hate usb audio interfaces with a passion, also.

OpenWrt has a place in that itty bitty boxes needed custom compilers and close attention paid to very small amounts of d and i-cache, which those running ubuntu + systemd have kind of missed, as well as tight integration with all the core tools like dns and dhcp and a zillion ip protocol encapsulations desktop OSes lack.

I see a lot of ubuntu and debian entering the embedded space now that cpus have got cache and memory to burn, and I do hope that one day we see more wifi pci cards that can actually function as APs, and antennas that work.

Presently that is hard to do - the iwl wifi6 cards kind of suck, and it is hard to find mt79 chips, and the ath10k was a huge step backwards from the ath9k in many respects.