I concede I'm biased as its maintainer, but I think it's ironic that non-free firmware is about to have better support than the flagship libre wireless firmware. I'm referring to open-ath9k-htc-firmware, which if you're not familiar, is the firmware for the most prominent USB wireless adapters that work with exclusively free software, including all of the recent Respects Your Freedom-certified ones.
I specifically have two grievances: * Unlike all other free firmware, firmware-ath9k-htc is not installed on systems by default. The only reason it's segregated is because it gets built from source, unlike the other free firmware. * The ath9k_htc firmware should also be in the installer so users can install over Wi-Fi. Fortunately the live images already include it, so I usually recommend users wanting to install over Wi-Fi use that. Note that downstream distros that are more free software-centric, like Trisquel and PureOS, have already addressed the foregoing by choosing to install firmware-ath9k-htc by default as a downstream change. I'm not a new Debian Contributor; I know how things work around here. But it would be nice if I could get some help from folks who already know the ins and outs of the Debian Installer, and I thought this thread would be a good opportunity to bring awareness to these issues affecting firmware-ath9k-htc. P.S. I'm aware that open-ath9k-htc-firmware may be FTBFS right now, I plan to have a fix shortly. P.P.S. I plan to split carl9170fw (the other 802.11n USB wireless firmware) out into its own source package in the style of firmware- ath9k-htc so we can build it from source too. Even though it's already in firmware-linux-free, carl9170 currently doesn't work with the installer either. Thanks for your consideration.
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