On Tue, 2022-04-19 at 01:27 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: > TL;DR: firmware support in Debian sucks, and we need to change this. After some discussion on #debian-www with sney (author of the current auto-download page) and larjona (web team), my preferred solution to this issue looks somewhat like what is written below. I believe this solution does not require a GR, as it balances the needs of different segments of the Debian community and Debian's priciples. Keep providing images without proprietary firmware, disable the automatic download on the website download page, create a new download page containing separate side-by-side panels catering to different segments of the audience for installing Debian, ordered by the sophistication of the audience and the amount of people in the audience. Each of the panels should contain appropriate iconography and minimal text to avoid overwhelming people; longer explanations could be hidden behind links/dropdowns. Where the images containing proprietary firmware images are mentioned, include an item pointing out the non-free firmware and the limitations of Debian support for that firmware. Some examples of the panels that could be included: * VMs; linking to the free images * libre hardware like RaptorCS's POWER9 computers; linking to the free images and explaining that we need help packaging the free firmware for those devices, since most of it isn't in Debian yet * desktops/laptops; linking to the non-free images * smartphones/tablets; linking to Mobian images * clouds; linking to the cloud images * servers; linking to the non-free images * Windows; linking to the Debian WSL app and win32-loader * SBCs; linking to some relevant info on the wiki * Raspberry Pi; linking to the RPi non-free images If the Debian CD/live teams don't want to test the free images, then those teams should feel free to stop testing them, and call for other people to do that work. If the Debian CD/live teams don't want to build the free images, then that would pose a problem for people who don't want to download or redistribute non-free firmware. I think there are enough of these people that the opportunity to hand over building the free images to a separate team would be needed. I feel that the above is a good balance of preventing the problems pointed out in your mail (along with some other ones), while not completely fixing all of them due to the conflict with the needs of the segment of Debian users who want to not have non-free firmware and then mitigating that through the creation of a separate team for that. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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