I hear you about the panopticon - I figured getting a Gl.iNet router is some protection, as I know what’s running on it and I can keep all my network traffic behind a VPN with a killswitch. Of course, they could try to make those illegal down the road. Who knows.

GL.iNet’s devices come with their own fork of OpenWRT pre-installed. The UI is easy to navigate and it does everything I need it to, so I haven’t felt any need to install OpenWRT proper, but if you want to, I believe you can easily find instructions to do so online.