Henning Makholm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Scripsit Raul Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> On Sat, Jan 01, 2005 at 11:33:21AM -0800, Josh Triplett wrote: > >>> Please suggest any case which you don't think this criteria adequately >>> covers. > >> The bios. >> Unless, we decide that the bios we put in non-free isn't the bios we >> need to boot the machine. > > On which architectures would we want to let anything declare a > Depends: on a BIOS package? Granted, the only arch I'm really > familiar with is i386, but most of those machines come with a > sufficiently adequate BIOS in ROM that it would be rather silly for > most packages, including stock kernels and boot loaders, to declare > more than a Suggests: against an alternative BIOS. That would just > bloat the user's file system without gaining him anything.
Some Alpha systems (I forgot which) came with only the inferior AlphaBIOS installed in flash. Later, an SRM version for this system was released, and installing this is generally considered a good thing. These firmwares required different boot loaders, and different kernel configurations, so a boot loader or kernel package could reasonably have some sort of dependency on one of the firmwares. -- Måns Rullgård [EMAIL PROTECTED]
