As fun as ARM and RISC-V single-board computers (SBCs) are, all too often getting the most out of the hardware requires the use of an unofficial firmware image. So too with the Banana Pi BPI-R4 Pro router SBC that has been out for a while, as OpenWRT support for it still very much unofficial. This is where [Interfacing Linux] goes on a bit of a rant while assembling one of these puppies into a sleek metal enclosure.
The first rule of OpenWRT Club is of course that you never run an unofficial image on any hardware that’s part of any network you care about. This is somewhat upsetting, as the testing shown in the video below reveals that performance is great when running it.
Currently OpenWRT support is painfully working its way through development, per the OpenWRT PR thread, so there’s hope that official support will appear at some point. As with all of such SBCs the question is always whether official support appears before the hardware has been rendered firmly obsolete. Until then the community Debian 13 image might actually be safer.