Re: Firmware stuff - was systemd troll
On Mon, 3 Mar 2014, Scott Ferguson wrote:
On 03/03/14 16:56, Bret Busby wrote:
On Sun, 2 Mar 2014, yaro@marupa.net wrote:
Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 03:05:20 From: yaro@marupa.net To:
debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: Re: Four people decided the
fate of debian with systemd. Bad faith and other such complete
fabrications likely Resent-Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2014 19:21:09 +0000
(UTC) Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
On Sunday, March 02, 2014 01:28:57 PM Doug wrote:
On 03/02/2014 02:02 AM, Scott Ferguson wrote:
On 02/03/14 16:53, yaro@marupa.net wrote:
On Sunday, March 02, 2014 04:25:13 PM Scott Ferguson wrote:
On 02/03/14 11:28, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
On Sun, 2014-03-02 at 10:55 +1100, Scott Ferguson wrote:
<snipped>
why a spearate firmware distribution of Debian Linux, needs to
exist, rather than the firmware being included in the offical Debian
version.
It is included, but not by default. This is IMO the right thing to do.
Consider spam. By law you can opt-out of spam (at least in Australia).
Which in effect means companies are free to spam you, until you tell
them not to. That's not freedom.
Debian is about freedom, so you *can* *opt-in* to licences that restrict
it - if you choose. Firmware has restrictions placed on it's use, by the
"firms". Those restrictions can restrict your freedom - by default
Debian seeks to protect your freedom, as long as you choose to do so.
When you install you are asked if you want to include the non-free and
contrib repositories. non-free is what it says it, and contrib is
packages required by non-free.
So Debian *does* include firmware, (both "free" and "non-free"), and the
choice is up to you whether you install it. By default you don't have it
installed, only the main repostitory. You are free to install it at
anytime by editing /etc/apt/sources.list and adding non-free and contrib
to the appropriate repository lines. e.g.:-
deb http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
It is my understanding that firmware was excluded from the official
Debian releases, a while ago.
At
http://raphaelhertzog.com/2011/03/14/missing-firmware-in-debian-learn-how-to-deal-with-the-problem/
is
"
Missing firmware in Debian? Learn how to deal with the problem
March 14, 2011 by Raphaël Hertzog
You know it already, since Debian 6.0 non-free firmware are no longer
provided by a standard Debian installation. This will cause some
troubles to users who need them. I’m thus going to do a small overview
on the topic and teach you what you need to know to deal with the
problem.
"
At
http://blog.einval.com/2010/12/15
is
"
Wednesday, 15 December 2010
Debian CDs with firmware included
We've just posted a news item about the removal of non-free firmware
from Debian's Linux kernel packages. Kudos to the kernel team and others
for the work involved to make this happen!
"
At
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.en
is
"
6.4.1. Preparing a medium
Official CD images do not include non-free firmware. The most common
method to load such firmware is from some removable medium such as a USB
stick. Alternatively, unofficial CD builds containing non-free firmware
can be found at
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/.
"
Thus, officially, Debian states that firmware is not included in the
official releases of Debioanm Linux, and that a person has to go looking
for it.
At
https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware
is
"
Firmware
Translation(s): English - Français - Italiano
Firmware refers to embedded software which controls electronic devices.
Well-defined boundaries between firmware and software do not exist, as
both terms cover some of the same code. Typically, the term firmware
deals with low-level operations in a device, without which the device
would be completely non-functional (read more on Wikipedia).
Contents
Devices/Drivers Firmware
Firmware during the installation
Location of the firmwares
List of firmware in Linux kernel
Computer Firmware
Devices/Drivers Firmware
Many devices require a firmware to operate. Historically, firmware were
built-into the device's ROM or Flash memory, but more and more often,
the firmware has to be loaded into the device by the driver during the
device initialization.
Some of these firmware are free and open-source, and some of them are
non-free, which means that you need to add the non-free and contrib
components to /etc/apt/sources.list; see sources.list(5) and Debian
archive basics (Debian Reference) for more information.
Firmware during the installation
In some cases the installer detects the need for non-free firmware and
prompts the user to make the firmware available to the installer to
complete the installation, see ipw2200 for an example. In other cases,
it does not (601475).
Before starting the installation process on hardware unfamiliar to you,
a suggestion is to download the firmware tarball for your installation
and unpack it into a directory named "firmware" in the root of a
removable storage device. When the installer starts, it will
automatically find the firmware files in the directory on the removable
storage and, if needed, install the firmware for your hardware. The link
to the firmware download for your Debian version is
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/firmware/.
Alternatively, there are now versions of the "netinst" CD images that
also include all the non-free firmware packages directly - see
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/
NetbootFirmware - Firmware for Netbooting.
Once the network is configured, Debian-Installer can fetch firmware from
Debian repositories.
"
From memory, at one stage, in trying to instal Debian Linux 6, the
installation could not complete, because the network card was not
included in the non-non-free firmware stuff of the official release, and
I had to find out about, and, find where to obtain, an installation ISO
image that contained the "non-free firmware"
I think, from memory, this problem arose because the Debian Project
people, with Debian Linux 6, decided to enforce the Debian policy of not
including any "non-free" software, in the official Debian releases,
even if a computer would not work, or, Debian Linux could not be
installed, without it.
Thus, it appears that, from Debian 6, which also happens to be when most
printing devices lost their operability with Debian Linux (I do not know
whether that was only coincidence, or, more than that), firmware, or,
"non-free" firmware, ceased being included in official releases of
Debian Linux, thus, reducing the functionality of Debian Linux, from
that time.
--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............
"So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992
....................................................
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