Re: Firmware - what are we going to do about it?
Hi,
On Mon, Apr 18, 2022 at 9:28 PM Steve McIntyre <steve@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
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