Once upon a time, John Harris <johnmh(a)splentity.com> said:
I cannot think of any reason not to use ones distro of choice as
their gateway
and/or VPN. I personally use a system Fedora (well, Fedora + Freed-ora-
freedom) for my router and VPN. OpenWRT is not inherently better than Fedora,
and there are many benefits of using Fedora over OpenWRT.
It's the difference between using a multitool and a purpose-built tool.
Sure, your Leatherman or Gerber can strip wires and screw in a switch,
but a good pair of wire strippers and assorted size screwdrivers will
usually be more convenient (and quicker) to use.
OpenWrt is a light-weight system designed for router setups. It has an
integrated web UI (for those that want it) that can configure and
monitor traffic, and all configuration normally needed is in a small set
of config files in one directory and in a common format (makes
management much easier for occasional edits).
There are things that OpenWrt does easily that Fedora doesn't do at all;
for example, the web UI on OpenWrt includes real-time traffic graphs. I
don't know of anything that can provide that in Fedora.
Also, OpenWrt uses much less resources than any general-purpose OS
install, so costs less.
--
Chris Adams <linux(a)cmadams.net>