The OpenWrt project started in January 2004. The first OpenWrt versions were based on Linksys GPL sources for WRT54G and a buildroot from the uclibc project. This version was known as OpenWrt "stable release" and was widely in use. There are still many OpenWrt applications, like the Freifunk-Firmware or Sip@Home, which are based on this version.

In the beginning of 2005 some new developers joined the team. After some months of closed development the team decided to publish the first "experimental" versions of OpenWrt. The experimental versions use a heavily customized build system based on buildroot2 from the uclibc project. OpenWrt uses official GNU/Linux kernel sources and only adds patches for the system on chip and drivers for the network interfaces. The developer team tries to re-implement most of the proprietary code inside the GPL tarballs of the different vendors. There are free tools for writing new firmware images directly into the flash (mtd), for configuring the wireless lan chip (wlcompat/wificonf) and to program the VLAN-capable switch via the proc filesystem. The codename of the first OpenWrt release is "White Russian", a popular cocktail. The development of the White Russian line has ended with the release of OpenWrt 0.9.

The development of the next release is taking place in our subversion (SVN) repository.

The legacy White Russian releases are still available, but are neither supported nor maintained:

• Final White Russian release
• Subversion branch

Substantial improvements to the build environment were made under the Buildroot-NG fork in August and September 2006, and these were merged back into the main Kamikaze development branch in mid-October 2006 and became the first official Kamikaze release. There were several Kamikaze releases in 2007-2010. Some documentation of the earlier system (which was also used in White Russian builds) is still available; the basics remain similar in the current bleeding-edge trunk.

Where other projects use major version numbers, OpenWrt releases are identified by code names. The current major release is Backfire, the legacy versions are White Russian and Kamikaze.

First Backfire 10.03 release was in April 2010.

The maintenance release 10.03.1 was released in December 2011.

The bleeding edge development trunk, where the main development is being made, is called as "trunk" in the SVN repository.

Until February 2011 it was confusingly also called "Kamikaze" (like an earlier stable branch), but with r25514 it was renamed to "Attitude Adjustment".

The name of the currently installed version is displayed in the console /etc/banner

Stable release version numbers are made from the year and the month when a new stable branch was created. An additional third number indicates service releases from that branch.

For pre-built images and the source code of the latest stable release are available on an extra page.

The following is a complete history of post White Russian releases (follow the links for release notes):