The OpenWrt project has announced the release of OpenWrt 25.12, a free and open-source Linux-based operating system primarily used for embedded devices, most notably residential gateways and routers, as the first stable version in the new 25.12 series.
The main highlight is the switch from the opkg package manager to APK (Alpine Package Keeper). Since the OpenWrt opkg fork is no longer maintained, the project has adopted APK as the default package manager. While most package names remain the same, command-line syntax has changed. The project provides an official opkg-to-apk cheat sheet to assist users with the transition.
I’m surprised they didn’t know that apk is very popular format for android. Might confuse a lot of users starting out.
I suspect the format existed before the Android version as Alpine has been around for a long time.
I was worried that this was a shift from copyleft to permissive licensing, but apk-tools (surprisingly) has the same GPLv2 licensing as opkg so it’s fine.
