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NinucsWrt

NinucsWrt is a distribution of the embedded network operating system OpenWrt specifically optimized to be deployed on the nodes of the Italian wireless community network Ninux.org. Its development started from the Ninux.org Cosenza "island" (NinuCS).

We strongly believe that the only entry barriers to a community network should be the understanding of its principles and the desire to be a part of that community, and not such things as the mastering of advanced networking. So our core aim is to provide a fully-featured network operating system for Ninux.org that requires the least possible amount of technical skill to employ.

Other aims of this project, in no particular order:

* Have fun and learn a lot!

We started this project not only because We think it might be useful to many, but also out of desire to learn about topics in advanced networking, OpenWrt facilities, the Linux kernel, maintenance best practices and programming.

* Selected Devices Support

While We understand people might want to use whatever device they have in hand right now (in which case you will always be able to simply recompile NinucsWrt for your device), We will only provide ready-to-flash binaries for a handful of selected devices, which we believe accommodates for a wide range of use cases without adding unnecessary duplication and maintenance burden.

We learned that a lot of devices have their very specific quirks to address, for instance through out-of-tree or backport patches, or custom configurations. Simply supporting every device OpenWrt has support for increases maintenance cost and thus decreases maintenance quality across the whole range for very little gain. By providing binaries only for carefully-selected devices we hope to encourage the purchase of well-known and well-working and open source-friendly network equipment. Another advantage in limiting official support is that we can (let the user base grow first) have assigned maintainer(s) to specific devices.

* Optimized for Ground Routing

NinucsWrt is designed to provide the best experience for nodes having a "ground routing" configuration, as described in the Ninux Ground Routing HowTo. It will eventually provide pre-configured ground routing for all the supported models and then auto-configuring ground routing with some purpose-built front-end for both the router and the radios. Also, with NinucsWrt we want to provide a baseline, reference firmware for writing documentation concerning ground routing. Our aim is to make as simple as possible to help expanding Ninux.org by building a supernode (or expanding a leaf node).

* Community-Driven Feature Set

As long as technical constraints allow us to do so, we will include the most frequently requested features in the most user-friendly possible fashion (pre-configured, auto-configuring, recipes, etc).

NOTE & RELEASE:

README: http://ninux.hlcs.it/NinucsWrt/README.txt