Hi, On Mon, Apr 18, 2022 at 9:28 PM Steve McIntyre <st...@einval.com> wrote: > > TL;DR: firmware support in Debian sucks, and we need to change this. See the > "My preference, and rationale" Section below. > > In my opinion, the way we deal with (non-free) firmware in Debian is a mess, > and this is hurting many of our users daily. For a long time we've been > pretending that supporting and including (non-free) firmware on Debian systems > is not necessary. We don't want to have to provide (non-free) firmware to our > users, and in an ideal world we wouldn't need to. However, it's very clearly > no > longer a sensible path when trying to support lots of common current hardware. > > Background - why has (non-free) firmware become an issue? > ========================================================= > > Firmware is the low-level software that's designed to make hardware devices > work. Firmware is tightly coupled to the hardware, exposing its features, > providing higher-level functionality and interfaces for other software to use. > For a variety of reasons, it's typically not Free Software. > > For Debian's purposes, we typically separate firmware from software by > considering where the code executes (does it run on a separate processor? Is > it > visible to the host OS?) but it can be difficult to define a single reliable > dividing line here. Consider the Intel/AMD CPU microcode packages, or the > U-Boot firmware packages as examples. > > In times past, all necessary firmware would normally be included directly in > devices / expansion cards by their vendors. Over time, however, it has become > more and more attractive (and therefore more common) for device manufacturers > to not include complete firmware on all devices. Instead, some devices just > embed a very simple set of firmware that allows for upload of a more complete > firmware "blob" into memory. Device drivers are then expected to provide that > blob during device initialisation.
I'm from the group that defends Debian current position on this and I like to install only what the machine needs to work and I use free firmware on my machine for the wireless network card for example. I don't see it as a mess, but it's organized by separating what's free from what's not. The question of identifying what firmware my machine needs, this for me is easy and it was just a question I had to learn in the beginning many years ago. It is a problem for some and not for all. There is the unofficial installer that solves this problem by installing only what the user's machine needs without the user doing it himself. -- Cheers, Leandro Cunha Software Engineer and Debian Contributor
