OpenWRT documentation
From Crashcourse Wiki
Following up on a thread over at the OpenWRT forums, I just want to explain why the online documentation for OpenWRT is maddeningly disorganized to the point of being virtually useless for beginners.
Let's assume I'm a total newbie and I've been told that I can run OpenWRT on the relatively common Linksys WRT54GL, so I go out and buy one, then I pop over to [OpenWRT] to figure out what to do next.
First stop? The obvious link named [Documentation], I guess ... at which point I am now in a world of hurt since that takes me straight to the "Kamikaze" documentation, with not a hint that wireless on my WRT54GL will work only with the earlier "WhiteRussian" release. For all intents and purposes, this Documentation page is utterly useless for a beginner, not to mention badly misleading. OK, so where from here?
Since that first attempt at figuring out what to do didn't do much good, we can follow the obvious link named [Supported devices], hoping that maybe that will tell me about my WRT54GL and how to get OpenWRT running on it. OK, this looks good, the table tells me that my WRT54GL is "Supported", but maybe I missed the legend at the top of the page, which explains that "Supported" means supported by WhiteRussian only. And note that this is the first place where I might have twigged to the fact that there are two different releases. And, on top of that, I still haven't been told what exactly to download yet for my WRT54GL. So things are not really working out. Back to the main page to see what else is there.
Next, we might try the [Download] link which, once again, takes me directly to the Kamikaze download directory, with no hint of WhiteRussian anywhere. And if I read the README file there, I might, for the first time, notice this "WhiteRussian" thing and not have a clue as to what it means, at which point I am now thoroughly confused.
OK, now let's imagine that, somehow, I've finally figured out that WhiteRussian is the earlier release and that that's what I want if my WRT54GL is to have working wireless, so I make it to the [WhiteRussian download directory] where I have a 00-README file that mercifully explains (finally) what firmware file I want to download.
Are you getting the idea?
More to come. We're not done here.
