On Fri, 5 Mar 2021 21:47:25 +0000 Joe <j...@jretrading.com> wrote: ...
> If it's user-installed non-free firmware for network interfaces, that is > the state of manufacturing today: we're back to Winmodems and you're > stuck with it. I have one of the last netbooks to come with an Ethernet > port. A USB-Ethernet widget is quite useful to have around these days. To be fair, Winmodems have limited hardware and do much of their work in software running on the host hardware. Network devices that require loadable firmware can be quite capable, hardware-wise, and the firmware runs on the NIC hardware itself. Winmodems therefore often lack Linux support, since software has to be written for the host, while loadable firmware doesn't pose any particular technical problem for Linux (aside from the ideological problem of it being non-free). Celejar
