OpenWrt 23.05 Released With Rust Package Support, MbedTLS Replaces WolfSSL

OpenWrt 23.05 has been released as the newest feature release for this embedded Linux distribution that is popular for use on networking devices.

OpenWrt 23.05 has replaced WolfSSL with MbedTLS as its default cryptographic library. The switch to MbedTLS comes for better size efficiency with it being smaller for its disk footprint, LTS and ABI stability, and TLS 1.3 support.

Another notable change with OpenWrt 23.05 is adding Rust package support so that code written in the memory-safe Rust programming language can now be integrated into the OpenWrt package infrastructure. Bottom, Ripgrep, Aardvark-DNS, and Maturin are some of the initial Rust programs for OpenWrt.

As with most OpenWrt updates, the hardware/device support has been expanded. OpenWrt 23.05 adds support for Qualcomm IPQ807x WiFi 6 SoCs, MediaTek Filogic 830 and 630 SoC support, support for more 2.5G PHYs, support for WiFi 6E on a few MediaTek chipsets, and more.

Powering OpenWrt 23.05 is the Linux 5.15.134 LTS kernel, Musl libc 1.24, GCC 12.3, Binutils 2.40, Busybox 1.36.1, and a variety of other package updates.

Downloads and more details on the OpenWrt 23.05 release via openwrt.org.