Hi everyone … I’m wondering if it is possible to install a custom OS on any of the mini vpn routers such ubuntu ? The hardware looks perfect for a number of projects.
Thanks,Troy
Hi Troy, welcome to the forum! For many non-router projects you can just use the generic OpenWrt firmware on this router, which allows easy customization and use it as a tiny Linux server, as OpenWrt is a real Linux distribution with a real Linux kernel. It comes with a ssh server and client, it has a lot of the standard Linux tools like cron to schedule things, init.d for running stuff, a web server, a shell so you can write your own shell scripts, and its not hard to create a build environment to compile your own custom programs. The OpenWrt distribution provide several thousand packages to extend the base functionality of the device. The AR300M-16 supports USB-2 storage devices, so you can grow the storage outside the little storage that comes inside the AR300M-16.
It amazes me that the AR300M-16 has more RAM and a much faster CPU then the first Unix workstation I used, which was a SUN SPARCstation. Even the networking is better, as that system only had a single 10Mb Ethernet port. The GL iNet hardware with the OpenWrt version of Linux can do a lot more then just routing if you care to spend sometime with it.