Hi, thank you for the extensive explanation what is needed and how we can approach this for a minimum price. From my point of view we should not only evaluate the price but also your effort to get it in some easily testable shape. If this would be another laptop that's fine for me. In case Laptops pile up at your place for testing you might like to hand over one of the older models to some other DD if you consider a new one for a good replacement. In short: I'll approve your request even for a 1000€ laptop if this is the best solution for your case. Kind regards and thanks a lot for all your work Andreas. Am Sun, May 25, 2025 at 05:38:04AM +0200 schrieb Cyril Brulebois: > Hi, > > For now I'm cc-ing debian-boot@ for information. Feel free to adjust > recipients as you see fit. > > > Writing with my D-I release manager hat: Over time it seems newer > laptops are getting equipped with Wi-Fi 7 chips, which we don't > support currently. If I got the gist right, we support older chips > implementing the wext interface (via wpa_supplicant). Newer chips > require going through nl80111. Not so old chips might be able to > deal with both wext and nl80211. In any case, I'd like to be able > to test what's happening with brand new chips, to make sure the > possible dual support doesn't get in the way. > > Looking around, it looks like they're only found in laptops in the > 1000+ EUR range (main criteria: Wi-Fi 7 capable, and deliverable to > France). > > A while back, Jonathan Carter ACKed the purchase of two middle/high > end laptops riddled with firmware because that made sense at the > time: trying to find ways to get systems installed, and workarounds > documented (this was for Debian 11). Those were also much helpful > when the (latest) GR about firmware passed, and they played a > crucial role in getting things lined up for Debian 12. They're still > pretty useful for all the firmware-related work and rework that we > have to do for new features, to fix old bugs, etc. > > If we were able to find something cheap-ish with Wi-Fi 7, e.g. > around 500 EUR, I think it would make sense to have something > self-contained to play with. Given my main focus is really Wi-Fi 7 > support, 1000+ EUR seems too much. > > Therefore I'd like to investigate external adapters. There seem to > be a bunch of options available in the 50-100 EUR range. Would you > approve the purchase of one or more such devices, for say up to 300 > EUR total? > > For example: > - MSI BE6500 (~ 80 EUR) > - NEWFAST BE6500 (~ 70 EUR) > - TP-Link BE6500 (~ 70 EUR) > > I haven't really looked into the specific of each (BE6500 comes up a > lot I suppose this is a standard chip that's integrated by various > vendors), but I'd need to make sure it's supported by the trixie > kernel of course (and if needed, firmware available in trixie). > > If it's determined that a full laptop is easier (and provided we > don't expect it to be completely unsupported under Linux 6.12), I'd > be fine with that option as a fallback plan. I don't want random > hardware to pile up at my place, but an extra laptop is still an > acceptable hardware addition at this stage… > > > The first step is to make sure the code we're thinking about adding > to netcfg (managing the network in d-i) will indeed flag those cards > and only those as unsupported, so that we can point users to some > documentation. I think Pascal is rather convinced of the proposed > implementation, but I'd like to double check with actual hardware. > > The second step would be trying to add support to netcfg. It seems > unlikely to happen before trixie is released, but if we can manage > to implement and test that a little after, and feel confident > enough, this could be considered for a backport through a point > release. > > > Thanks for your time. > > > Cheers, > -- > Cyril Brulebois (kibi@debian.org) <https://debamax.com/> > D-I release manager -- Release team member -- Freelance Consultant -- https://fam-tille.de
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