Hi, Philip Hands wrote: > While looking at the FSF site, I noticed this somewhat amusing method > for reconciling these two stances: > https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/install-fest-devil.html
Typically Stallman: "My new idea is that the install fest could allow the devil to hang around, off in a corner of the hall, or the next room. (Actually, a human being wearing sign saying 'The Devil,' and maybe a toy mask or horns.) The devil would offer to install nonfree drivers [...]" > but I'm afraid I've no idea how one could implement something equivalent > in the medium of downloadable images. Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > > You can pass various parameters to the installer: you can also uninstall > > the non-free firmware after installation - So one could explain and advertise to organizers of install fests how to instruct the installer to ignore non-free firmware. Or an imposter of archangel Michael could offer to eradicate any impurity as last step of the installation (possibly after making a first backup). Philip Hands wrote: > I'm sure if we had a tool for converting "+firmware" to "pure" images, As GNU maintainer of xorriso i am probably obliged to help with the purification of Debian ISOs, if there is real interest. The main open problem which i see in this regard is the list of develish packages which shall be removed. Would /firmware/Contents-firmware with the third word in each line tell what is non-free ? In debian-12.0.0-amd64-netinst.iso i see lines like: /lib/firmware/ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw firmware-ath9k-htc_1.4.0-108-gd856466+dfsg1-1.3_all.deb main /lib/firmware/amd/amd_sev_fam17h_model0xh.sbin amd64-microcode_3.20230414.1_amd64.deb non-free-firmware Is all non-free firmware under /pool confined in /pool/non-free-firmware ? (Is all firmware under /firmare mirrored under /pool ?) If so, then one could remove the develish files from the various content lists and re-pack the ISO with updated content lists and removed files. This is probably not more complicated than merging debian-cd ISOs by https://dev.lovelyhq.com/libburnia/libisoburn/raw/master/test/merge_debian_isos as described in https://wiki.debian.org/MergeDebianIsos (It seems that /firmware/Contents-firmware should be merged, too. Now i wonder why this did not hamper the use of the resulting amd64 ISOs. Is it not used by any program ?) > I would expect the FSF to be > almost exactly as grumpy even if "pure" images were easily available. A do-it-yourself purifier program would not bring Debian on the FSF list of free distros. But it would help with posing as install fest devil. People who want to organize such a fest are entitled to ask me for support. Have a nice day :) Thomas
