I agree, or even something like openwrt. This was just to see if it could be done, it’s not the most practical OS for the hardware but it runs pretty well!
OpenWRT no longer supports devices with the 4MB ROM or 32MB RAM
Yeah, I encountered this. Repurposed my Netgear WNR1000 v2 with OpenWrt to act as a bridge to connect wired devices to my network. While it has served this role flawlessly for 5+ years, it's frozen in time running an old kernel. The write-up as to why they had to drop support is a good read. [1]