Thanks for throwing in yet another choice for me to consider... :)

I feel like a router is best served by a purpose-built OS, that is heavily focused on that task, and restricts the execution of arbitrary software, for obvious reasons. I suppose one could single-handedly customize a general purpose distro for that task, but I'd rather trust a group of dedicated and more talented hackers to do this for me.

That, and I'd rather not manage nftables rules directly. :) Though it would be a great learning experience, so I'll think about it.

>I feel like a router is best served by a purpose-built OS, that is heavily focused on that task, and restricts the execution of arbitrary software, for obvious reasons

well, in this case, unless something changed recently this is definitely not openwrt