On Sun, 2013-05-05 at 20:57 -0400, Filipus Klutiero wrote: > Hi Ben, > could you explain why you changed this report's severity to wishlist? > wishlist severity is designed for mere RFEs. This *is* a request for enhancement. Previously, you wrote: > Therefore, the prompt is misleading and may cause the user to install > unneeded software or change hardware without a strong reason. There are very few cases where the current statement is incorrect. In your example, the Realtek PHY firmware patch is needed because (if I understand correctly) the ROM firmware is incompatible with a lot of other Ethernet devices and won't establish a link. Even though it may not affect the specific cable and switch you were using during installation, you will not want to find out about this bug when you plug the machine in somewhere else! (And I don't want to see this bug being reported against the driver.) I don't understand what you mean about changing hardware. Is this about people who think firmware is evil if it's on disk but not if it's in flash? > Radeon cards are good examples of devices which are improved by > firmware without being unusable without. The current AMD GPUs cannot be used without firmware, except through the userland VESA driver which has appalling performance and doesn't support the native resolution of most displays (or any widescreen displays, AFAIK). We definitely should be alerting users that this hardware does need firmware to work properly. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings If God had intended Man to program, we'd have been born with serial I/O ports.
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part