I have many nerdy friends who have been Linux users for ages. But most of them don’t know such a thing as Openwrt exists or have never bothered to give it a try. It’s a very fun piece of software to play with and can be extremely useful for routing traffic. Wondering why it isn’t more popular/widely used.
the option i suggested is also a single device.
most commercial routers can run openwrt. you dont need a specialized device.
I still need a cable modem. And as far as I know, none of the ones that can be used with my provider support any other OS.