Linksys has just revealed at CES 2016 that all the WRT routers now have DD-WRT support, making this the first company of its type to fully embrace an open source solution.

Linksys is one of the most important companies that builds networking hardware, and it’s known for its quality hardware. In this case we’re talking about routers in the WRT series, which are already very good. The company decided to partner up with DD-WRT in order to provide better support for their products.

Many Linksys users were already installing DD-WRT and other similar products on their routers, so the company figured out that providing official support for this kind of firmware is actually beneficial to its customers. Unfortunately, what Linksys is doing is a drop of water in an ocean, as the majority of companies providing networking hardware don’t have this kind of openness.

Linksys already provides support for OpenWrt

Some of you might remember that at last year’s CES 2015, Linksys said that the WRT1200AC Router featured official OpenWRT support (the excellent "Chaos Calmer" release), and now they are extending that support to DD-WRT.

"With Linksys and Marvel working closely to improve the upstream support for the Marvel CPUs and Wi-Fi radios, DD-WRT can now provide stable and robust support for the modern WRT series of routers in our alternate firmware platform, building on what was started many years back with the first WRT," said Peter Steinhauser, Co-CEO, DD-WRT.

The routers with DD-WRT support include WRT1900AC, WRT1200AC, and the recently launched WRT1900ACS Dual-band Gigabit Wi-Fi. It’s very likely that upcoming routers from Linksys will include DD-WRT support by default.

The rise in popularity for these Linux distributions means that hardware makers can no longer ignore them. They provide better access to the hardware and more features, not to mention increased security. It’s a win-win situation for both the company and the users.