I'm reading that since the Slate 7 and the Flint 3 use Qualcomm chipsets, there are questions about long-term support since OpenWRT doesn't support Qualcomm. I don't know what GL.iNet’s support history is like, or if they have a history of supporting their products long-term. Can I realistically get at least a decade of support from GL.iNet, and if not, can I at least flash OpenWRT to them?
from what I understand with OpenWrt side it is hard because Qualcomm doesn't open source their blobs and wireless firmware, it's harder for them to develope a driver which intepretes these blobs.
This means it can take a very long time for them to develope a working driver, the OpenWrt version on gl firmware is not true OpenWrt, it is a fork which they call Qualcomm SDK (QSDK), Qualcomm maintains this sdk and GL-iNet builds on top of this, alot of the firmware is ancient, but that doesn't mean GL can backport security fixes, often such SDK's are for vendor brands also like tp-link, linksys alot of them could use the QSDK as base.
Besides that, Wifi 7 is very new within the OpenWrt realm, often between the span of wifi versions it take atleast one year or a little bit longer to mature stable, for qualcomm probably even more years.
It is possible there might be a fork adapting faster, such one to look forward to is openwifi project by the infra telecom, they did this before with the Flint 1.
As for performance, I would say... with openwrt you might go a step backwards, simply because nss offloading and a bunch of propertairy functions by Qualcomm cannot be used, and sometimes there are very strange bugs and glitches which are vague for the developers to understand.
MTK on the otherside does publicly have their blobs and one of the OpenWrt devs has tights with Mediatek from what I understood.
As for GL support I don't know I can't awnser that, I can only compare it with the Flint 1, and they actually did support it very long, i'd still think they even do now, but I lost track since I don't use it anymore, the best days where with openwifi 
, I hope one day Flint 3 gets the same threatment. 
4 Likes
At least a decade? I think you are dreaming.
My expectation is 2-3 years.
The original Slate, the AR750S-EXT, was a great router that even received a CES 2019 Innovation Award. It was released in 2019. GL iNet announced its EOL in October 2022 and committed to just two more years of firmware support. Firmware support during its last two years was been poor at best, with most users running older versions of the 3.x firmware to allow them to keep using their routers. So for early adopters, the best-case scenario ended up being 5 years or less of official support.
The only silver lining is that the AR750S-EXT supports OpenWRT. However, I’ve seen no commitment to OpenWRT support for either of the newer routers.
2 Likes
If it's fully supported by OpenWRT, then why not?
Which chipset did the 2019 Slate use? This seems to reinforce motions that Asian manufacturers have port long-term support for their products.
If a GL.iNet product uses a Mediatek chipset that is fully supported by OpenWRT, is it reasonable to expect 5-10 years of software support?
You said support from gl-inet. If openwrt supports it is up to openwrt.
Ok, but I'm guessing Qualcomm products won't be easily flashed to vanilla OpenWRT firmware?
Once there is a release, it would be just as simple as a sysupgrade via manual firmware upgrade
The only thing what you should avoid are OpenWrt images with the factory in their name because this replaces the recovery system U-boot by their own less friendly version with no web ui but with tftp, just keep it with sysupgrade in its name.
And you should do a clean upgrade without the settings kept or by putting a backup back, simply because configuration references are changed like the wifi devices and some other things.
Snapshots generally don't have a ui, so you need to keep a eye on releases only for OpenWrt.
1 Like
If you want openwrt support there is plenty of gl-inet devices already supported by openwrt.
The Flint 3 is fully supported by OpenWRT despite having a Qualcomm chipset?
I don't believe openwrt support the flint 3. I also have not seen them announce any intention to support it.
This is likely because the flint 3 is not out yet?
If you want openwrt support you could pick a mt3000 or mt6000. Or any of the other gl-inet devices openwrt support.
If you get at least 10 years support from openwrt is anyone guess. I certainly would not be making purchases making assumptions that your device will be supported for 10+ years. Openwrt may drop any of the devices next month, who knows other than the Devs donating their time.
For gl-inet thsemlves depending on the device I would also assume 1-3 years support. Picking popular models sometimes will get you a slightly longer support than less popular models.
The Flint 3 is already out. It’s funny that it advertises OpenWRT support, and yet there is the risk that after GL.iNet abandons the Flint 3, I can’t count on flashing it to OpenWRT.
The flint 3 is running on an openwrt base/fork.
Not entirely true
They could contribute to the OpenWifi project, this happened before with the Flint 1, which allows to self compile a image without the gl ui, if you check their commits it is likely these developers already are adding support to the soc, for GL-iNet it's only a mather of contributing the DTSI, which is basicly a file which tells how many leds there are, what ports are what etcetera and which soc (basicly the layout of the router).
And now there is support for Flint 1 in OpenWrt itself I believe, I did take note of a pull request but not sure if that one was merged.
It's not the same thing, right?