OpenWrt is generally the best option for keeping old hardware fresh, but it would be really nice to have a Debian-like automatic update mechanism.
I often delay updating my router because it takes ~20 minutes of work to reinstall packages, manually merge config files, and make SSH stop complaining about the host key.
There is an incentive to use as few features as possible, because every divergence from the base config is a perpetual maintenance burden.
Great news - what you're wishing for mostly already exists[1]. The relatively new sysupgrade server and attended-sysupgrade clients automate the process of creating custom images matching already installed packages. After the breaking network config change a few years ago, it's now pretty safe to keep config files and ssh keys while flashing an upgrade image. The end result now is that I can seamlessly and painlessly update my OpenWRT boxes with just a few clicks or commands, despite loads of installed packages and config files.
[1] https://sysupgrade.openwrt.org/
Thanks, I just used luci-app-attendedsysupgrade to upgrade from 23.05.0-rc2 to -rc3 with minimal pain. The only problem is that it lost my scripts in /root.
That still seems like a major issue, because I and probably quite a few other people rely on the security page to decide when to look into upgrading.
I hope there is some rationale for why the security fixes in later releases were not serious enough to warrant an advisory on the security page, rather than it just being an oversight.
Your attitude comes off as dismissive and condescending while gaslighting a perfectly valid criticism.
Why not recognize that the commentor is providing feedback, even if not directly, and is delivering it in a forum context which we (HN visitors) actually read?
The notion that every bit of feedback like this shoud be replaced with a FOSS contribution is profoundly entitled on your part.
