hi Steve, On Tue, Apr 19, 2022 at 01:27:46AM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: > TL;DR: firmware support in Debian sucks, and we need to change this. See the > "My preference, and rationale" Section below. [...] and anyone involved, especillay including those not listed here: > Thanks to people who reviewed earlier versions of this document and/or made > suggestions for improvement, in particular: > > • Cyril Brulebois > • Matthew Garrett > • David Leggett > • Martin Michlmayr > • Andy Simpkins > • Neil Williams I just wanna say THANK YOU VERY MUCH for this thread and everything good which will undoubtfully arise from it. You rock. And for those unware I would just like to point out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_ME#Hardware which explains that on modern Intel CPUs, there's another 386 CPU inside the CPU, running Minix, so that "The ME has its own MAC and IP address for the out-of-band interface, with direct access to the Ethernet controller; one portion of the Ethernet traffic is diverted to the ME even before reaching the host's operating system". My point is not, that other CPUs don't have this problem, but rather that there's a lot of 'invisible' firmware on any modern computer, starting with the CPU but going down all the way to the battery, screen, mouse and keyboard. So this thread is (roughly guesstimated) only about 10-23% of the firmware running on your computer, while today (as opposed to 1993) most of this firmware *can* be updated. IMO firmware is (sadly or not) somewhat out of scope for Debian. Even though, or maybe precisely because hardware *is* software nowadays. So, I'll say it again: many thanks to everyone involved in improving running Debian on modern computers. And huge thanks to those working on free and open hardware too. -- cheers, Holger ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ OpenPGP: B8BF54137B09D35CF026FE9D 091AB856069AAA1C ⠈⠳⣄ War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Covid is like the flu.
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