Welcome to FreeWRT (vintage edition)
FreeWRT is a meta GNU/Linux distribution for vintage WLAN router. In this context "meta" means, you can build the complete distribution from source. FreeWRT is meant to be an appliance development kit (ADK) especially designed for embedded system developers and advanced users.
Our latest stable release will be FreeWRT 2.0!
The FreeWRT developer provides a menu based configuration to choose between classic routers, root filesystem flavours and a lot of software packages for your own Linux based appliance. The ADK downloads all software packages via the internet and creates a working toolchain (compiler, linker, assembler, debugger), kernel and root file system containing only the minimal set of software and drivers to support all integrated hardware of your router. The default firmware image configures existing non-wireless network interfaces so that you can connect via secure shell client to your router after the installation of the firmware image.
The toolchain is based on:
- Binutils 2.45
- GCC 14.3.0
- uClibc-ng 1.0.55
- GDB 16.2
- Linux-Headers 6.12.41
The minimal system is based on:
- Linux 6.12.41
- uClibc-ng 1.0.55
- Busybox 1.37.0
- Dropbear 2025.87
and some minor helper tools as mtd, fwcf, evtest and nvram. The best way to install FreeWRT on a supported device is to use our ADK on Debian GNU/Linux.
FreeWRT supports following vintage WLAN routers:
- Linksys WRT54G (v2.0, v2.2, v3.0, v3.1, v4.0)
- Linksys WRT54GL
- Linksys WRT54GS (v1.0, v1.1, v4)
- Asus WL500g (deluxe/premium)
- Netgear WGT634u
Get the code via GIT: git clone https://git.freewrt.de/git/freewrt
Please never build as root! This code is work in progress (WIP) and might fail for you. At the moment I am only testing on Linksys WRT54GS v1.0 (8 MB Flash, 32 MB RAM) and Linksys WRT54GS v4 (4 MB Flash, 16 MB RAM). We have over 320 packages available, but most are from 2007 and are not updated yet. Following packages were updated: gdbserver, strace, tcpdump, dnsmasq, hostapd and iptables.
You can start the menu based configuration via "make menuconfig". If the prerequisite checks are successful you will get a menu, where you should at least choose a target system. If you exit the menu, you can start the build process via "make" or in more verbose mode via "make v". The build process will download all needed sources via internet and will build a working toolchain (compiler, linker, assembler, debugger), a kernel and a usable basic root filesystem for your WLAN router.
Handbook as PDF is here: https://www.freewrt.de/docs/handbook.pdf
Handbook as single HTML is here: https://www.freewrt.de/docs/allinone/index.html
Handbook as split HTML is here: https://www.freewrt.de/docs/splitup/index.html
If you find any bugs or have any feature requests, please report them to me.
If you like to help please contact me via wbx@….
If you need a Linksys WRT54GS v1.1 please contact me, I have a friend still owning 20 of them.
Sunshine!
Waldemar
