[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Firware drivers?



On Tue, Feb 08, 2011 at 09:09:20AM -0800, Mark wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 7:36 AM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:51:00 +0100, Geronimo wrote:
> >
> > (...)
> >
> > > Now its time, to become more pragmatic, which means, debian should offer
> > > installation media, that include non-free firmware ... That installation
> > > media should be marked as non-free, but I think, it is vital to have it.
> >
> > I'm afraid you'll have to fight with Debian's own Policies:
> >
> > http://www.debian.org/CD/faq/index.en.html#nonfree
> >
> 
> I for one am fine with the Debian policies and am thankful to have such a
> great free OS.  My struggle, and I doubt it is mine alone, is that as a
> first-time upgrader, the Lenny to Squeeze transition might break a few
> systems, which I have a limited window of time to fix if something goes
> wrong.  I need to be prepared as much as possible given those circumstances,
> hence I've been scouring the Release Notes.  The biggest concern for me is
> how, for example ipw2x00 and bcm43xx firmware upgrades will work.  According
> the the Release Notes, it seems that the firmware-linux package may handle
> it (
> http://www.debian.org/releases/squeeze/i386/release-notes/ch-whats-new.en.html#nonfree-firmware)
> but the Debian wiki says to use the /etc/apt/sources.list method (
> http://wiki.debian.org/ipw2200#InstallationonEstablishedSystems for ipw2x00
> and http://wiki.debian.org/bcm43xx#b43-b43legacy for b43xx).  When I try to
> see what the firmware-linux metapackage contains, the debian webpage returns
> an error (??) (http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/firmware-linux).
> 
I just upgraded my son's laptop.  It uses the ipw2x00 firmware for his
wireless card.  The upgrade did not change that.  I followed the release
notes for the most part.  Specifically:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (on Lenny)
change sources to squeeze and replaced debian-volatile with squeeze-updates
removed the backports repo
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (on Squeeze repos)
apt-get install linux-image-2.6-686
apt-get install udev
reboot
apt-get dist-upgrade (on Squeeze repos)

During that dist-upgrade, the wireless card stopped working.  It was
fixed with a reboot.  I suspect, but am not sure, that I could have
fixed it by restarting network-manager.

-Rob


Reply to: