Well Jason, you are an idiot.
If you prefer DD-WRT becuase it has more options, then I guess it’s worth giving up speed and reliability. How many of those options do you even use or understand? I would bet none.

I know the differences between ALL features. I wold not make a decision between the three+ choices unless I understood ALL the features.

Fortunately, I have been using Tomato and OpenWRT both for much longer than a year. My review goes unchanged after using Tomato. Other than the interface and QoS are even better than I ever imagined…

Thanks for the comedy! Now get a life.

I’ve used DD-WRT for several years now on two concurrently-used routers (for separate access points in different parts of the house/office). Never had a problem with it. Yes it’s annoying that you have to reboot after changing some options, but how many people do that regularly? I use the static IP and DNS features and everything just works. My one complaint is that when I upgrade firmware it loses configuration, and you can’t apply your config backups to new revs of fw. Very painful. Yes there are some incredibly complex recipes people have posted that if I spent days studying could probably resolve this but not worth it. It should be built in. But is Tomato any better (don’t answer if you’ve never tried it, PLEASE ).

sold.

It’s pretty amazing the comments have gone on this long. I figured since this article is still getting traffic, I’ll post my opinion on these firmwares, too, essentially as a flowchart for which one would suit you best.

Tomato first… I have not tried Tomato, but it prolly *is* the best if it isn’t lacking a specific feature that you need. From what I understand, the only serious features lacking are: vWLAN/VLAN, VPN, the security of a 2.6 kernel (but having 2.4 is where the speed in Tomato comes from), and right now USB support for the ASUS WL-500g Premium which I have. Other than that, it’s the fastest, simplest, prettiest, and most practical for QoS configuration.

OpenWRT second… Since I have a WL-500g Premium, I want USB support, so I am using OpenWRT. I was lucky enough to come across somebody who had already configured a firmware from SVN with the new LuCi interface for this exact router (adding USB support, opening up mem, etc.) in the #openwrt channel on FreeNode. There’s prolly a firmware posted on the OpenWRT forum, also… and that’s definitely where OpenWRT shines the most — large community and large no. of packages available. This firmware will be around longer than the shady DD-WRT for sure… so get your Linux haxing skills together already. This is the firmware most similar to Debian/Ubuntu.

DD-WRT third… I would only use this firmware if you were one of the unlucky saps who got the WRT54G versions with limited memory. DD-WRT micro is the only firmware to fit in the 2MB of memory given by these limited devices (what were they v4 & v5?). Also, if you just absolutely need something like virtual LANs, VPN, etc. and you don’t know your way around the Linux command line to well… this is the firmware for you. However, today will always be the best day to start learning Linux commands and filesystem organization if you haven’t already!!