Support for GL-AX1800 and AXT1800 has finally been merged into the openwrt main build.
Target System (Qualcomm Atheros 802.11ax WiSoC-s)
Subtarget (Qualcomm Atheros IPQ60xx)
Target Profile (GL.iNet GL-AXT1800)
I haven't tried it yet, but this gives hope that it will eventually make it into official openwrt release
https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=c3f2bb7afc72a6b6af99ff466bc22d9f123e36ab
detailed instructions in the git commit.
This is wonderful news!
I am getting a failed build due to another patch that was applied for a PR for glinet_gl-b3000. So I guess I will wait until this is resolved before trying it out. EDIT: conflict appears to be fixed in the latest main
Yes there's a couple of Qualcomm issues, the RAM requirement of a minimum of 512mb to run the open source WiFi driver is a major drawback.
You tend to end up with around 380mb free.
Unless I am missing something, openwrt is using ath11k drivers, which is also what gl.inet uses. The main difference I see so far is openwrt using aht11k v2.5 vs gl.inet ath11k v2.6
ath11k is proprietary, it's FOSS with respect to the kernel but has proprietary firmware.
Openwrt native cannot use the proprietary parts in the Qualcomm SDK GL use to talk to the proprietary firmware, so driver might be the wrong word, but it's loaded differently.
Thanks for the explanation @hecatae.