You actually don't even need two interfaces on the box if you have a managed switch. It's not too difficult to configure your only interface as an 802.11q trunk port, and then you can use the managed switch as a sort of "interface expander". This is referred to as a "router on a stick" configuration, and it's how my home network is configured. Plus, if it's a PoE managed switch, you can install some cheap enterprise surplus Aruba IAPs around the house for Wi-Fi which is a lot higher quality than a consumer router or a mesh setup.
My home router was an old Thinkpad for a while, but then I switched over to a slightly newer Dell Optiplex that my work was throwing out. The plus side of that is that the i7 is total overkill for routing so I can also have my "router" run some VMs for network services and cut down on the number of boxen in my homelab rack.
Alpine is a great distro for this.
I have actually been curious about this: How good can a WiFi mesh get latency-wise, given the right equipment, and how close would a consumer router setup be to that, do you happen to know?
>Wi-Fi which is a lot higher quality than a consumer router
I am not really sure about it. My ISP provided AP can do a gigabit over wifi.
I need to change it because the ISP hardcodes the dns for spying reasons.
But sadly to match that performance I need to spend like $180 to get an AP with that performance