OpenWrt 24.10.0-rc1 - First release candidate

[Hauke Mehrtens]

Hi,

The OpenWrt community is proud to announce the first release candidate 
of the upcoming OpenWrt 24.10 stable series.
OpenWrt 24.10.0-rc1 incorporates over 5100 commits since branching the 
previous OpenWrt 23.05 release and has been under development for over 
one year.

**This is just a release candidate and not the final release yet.**

Download firmware images using the OpenWrt Firmware Selector:
  * 
https://openwrt.github.io/firmware-selector-openwrt-org?version=24.10.0-rc1
Download firmware images directly from our download servers:
  * https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/24.10.0-rc1/targets/


Please test this version
========================

This is not the final version, this is a test version. Please report 
problems and bugs in our issue tracker. 
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/issues


Highlights in OpenWrt 24.10:
===========================

General changes
===============

  * TLS 1.3 support in default images
    * mbedtls was updated to version 3.6 which includes support for
      TLS 1.3
  * Activate POSIX Access Control Lists and file system security
    attributes for all file systems on devices with big flash sizes. This
    is needed by docker nowadays.
  * Activate kernel support for Multipath TCP on devices with big flash
    sizes.


Many new devices added
======================

OpenWrt 24.10 supports over 1950 devices. Support for over 100 new 
devices was added in addition to the device support by OpenWrt 23.05.

  * Added d1 target for AllWinner D1 RISC-V SoC
  * Added ixp4xx target for Intel XScale IXP4xx SoCs.
  * Added loongarch64 target for SoCs with Loongson LoongArch CPUs.
  * Added starfive target for StarFive JH71x0 (7100/7110) SoCs.
  * Added stm32 target for STMicroelectronics STM32 SoCs.
  * Renamed ipq807x target to qualcommax.
  * Removed ath25 target. It supported Atheros ieee80211g devices with
    maximum 16MB RAM
  * Removed bcm63xx target. It supported some Boardcom DSL MIPS SoCs and
    was replaced by the bmips target. The Boardcom DSL itself was never
    supported.
  * Removed octeontx target. It supported the Octeon-TX CN80XX/CN81XX
    based boards.
  * Removed oxnas target. It supported the PLXTECH/Oxford NAS782x/OX8xx.

Core components update
======================

Core components have the following versions in 24.10.0-rc1:

  * Updated toolchain:
    * musl libc 1.2.5
    * glibc 2.38
    * gcc 13.3.0
    * binutils 2.42
  * Updated Linux kernel
    * 6.6.63 for all targets
  * Network:
    * hostapd master snapshot from September 2024, dnsmasq 2.90,
      dropbear 2024.86
    * cfg80211/mac80211 from kernel 6.11.2


Upgrading to 24.10
===================

Sysupgrade can be used to upgrade a device from 23.05 to 24.10, and 
configuration will be preserved in most cases.

  * Sysupgrade from 22.03 to 24.10 is not officially supported.

  * User of the Linksys E8450 aka. Belkin RT3200 running OpenWrt 23.05 or
    earlier will need to run installer version
    https://github.com/dangowrt/owrt-ubi-installer/releases/tag/v1.1.3
    or later in order to reorganize the UBI layout for the 24.10 release.

-----------------

Full release notes and upgrade instructions are available at
  https://openwrt.org/releases/24.10/notes-24.10.0-rc1

In particular, make sure to read the regressions and known issues before 
upgrading:
  https://openwrt.org/releases/24.10/notes-24.10.0-rc1#known_issues

For a detailed list of all changes since 23.05.0, refer to
  https://openwrt.org/releases/24.10/changelog-24.10.0-rc1

To download the 24.10.0-rc1 images, navigate to:
  https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/24.10.0-rc1/targets/
Use OpenWrt Firmware Selector to download:
  https://openwrt.github.io/firmware-selector-openwrt-org?version=24.10.0-rc1

As always, a big thank you goes to all our active package maintainers, 
testers, documenters and supporters.

Have fun!

The OpenWrt Community

---

To stay informed of new OpenWrt releases and security advisories, there
are new channels available:

  * a low-volume mailing list for important announcements:
https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-announce

  * a dedicated "announcements" section in the forum:
https://forum.openwrt.org/c/announcements/14

  * other announcement channels (such as RSS feeds) might be added in the
     future, they will be listed at https://openwrt.org/contact