Linux 5.17 Mainlines Support For More Obsolete MIPS-Based Wireless Routers

While the MIPS CPU architecture itself is at the end of the road, kernel developers still are busy with MIPS considering the Loongson hardware that is popular in China and lots of older MIPS hardware out there lacking mainline Linux kernel support. For Linux 5.17 several more older, consumer-grade network routers are seeing mainline support.

With MIPS-specific code for Linux 5.17 the Loongson 2K1000 reset driver has been merged, support for the TX4939 SoC and RBTX4938/RBTX4939 boards removed with no known users remaining, MIPS support for the Broadcom BRCMSTB PCIe controller, and other fixes and clean-ups. Plus there is support for more MIPS-based devices (routers) using the Broadcom BCM47xx MIPS-based SoCs.

The Linksys WRT320N v1 is one of the new routers now supported by Linux 5.17 after previously carrying out-of-tree support in some of the router/network Linux distributions like OpenWRT. This router uses the BCM4717A MIPS processor at 354MHz. The WRT320N dates back more than one decade and limited to 802.11n. It is available used from a number of online marketplaces for ~$20 if wanting to toy around with Linux on consumer routers.

The Netgear R6300 is also seeing mainline support for that 802.11ac/802.11n router with Gigabit LAN ports being available for nearly one decade.

The Netgear WN2500RP v1/v2 routers / WiFI range extenders as another decade old product is also now seeing mainline Linux kernel support thanks to hobbyists.

The full list of changes for the MIPS code in Linux 5.17 can be found via this pull request.