Re: Manually add firmware (or other) packages for installation?
Holger Wansing wrote:
>> Modern hardware (especially graphics cards or network devices) often needs
>> to have nonfree firmware installed in order to be (fully) functional. This
>> may already have been dealt with, but if not the firmware can be installed
>> at this stage.
>
> Yes, a bit shorter and clearer.
[...]
>> If you know your hardware requires this, and you have enabled "non-free"
>> package sources, you can list firmware packages here to have them installed.
>> For AMD/ATI graphics cards you might want to install "firmware-amd-graphics";
>> for Intel or Nvidia, "firmware-misc-nonfree".
>
> Ok.
>
>> But what exactly is the context here? If it hasn't happened already, does
>> that imply they weren't available on the installer itself and need to be
>> downloaded? If the user has already had a chance to configure network APT
>> sources, it no longer matters whether the installer itself includes
>> non-free, unless of course they were hoping to download wifi firmware...
>
> The point is:
> the current installer is unable to detect, if you have a graphics card, which
> driver requires nonfree firmware! So, even if you use some of the non-free
> installation images with included firmware packages, the installer - as it is
> now - will NOT install firmware for your graphics card.
> In the worst case, the system will then be unable to display anything in X,
> no login screen, nothing.
> What will users assume then, what happened?
> "My system hangs when booting!" or "My system cannot display anything via
> my graphics card. Is the graphics driver broken?" or similar...
So we could add some extra hint about this in the intro:
This
may already have been dealt with, but if the installer does not include
non-free firmware packages, or could not detect the need for them, it
may be necessary to fetch them manually at this stage.
I'm assuming there's no point adding anything about wifi firmware on a
thumbdrive, since that needs to happen *before* the APT setup stage...
>>> + .
>>> + Please note, that you can also use this dialog for installation of any other
>>> + additional packages you want to have installed, not just firmware. Package
>>> + names need to be space-separated.
>>> + .
>>> + If you don't know what to enter, just leave it blank to not install any
>>> + additional packages.
>>> +
>>
>> Or just:
>>
>> This dialog can also be used to install non-firmware packages, or left
>> blank to do nothing. Package names must be space-separated.
>
> It's not clear enough to me, what's meant here with such formulation. It's much
> shorter, but this way it tends to confuse the user, I fear.
Fair enough, your version doesn't have anything much wrong with it
apart from being longer.
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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