I have another laptop which dual boot with Fedora and Windows10, it is not my primary laptop since 9 months ago and I haven't used it since then. I plan to fully install Debian testing on this machine because this laptop has dual graphic cards (optimus) and theoretically, with Debian 11 (or newer), special configuration shouldn't be needed and offloading should be available as soon as you've installed the proprietary drivers[1]. This machine has a faulty LAN port and only 1 of 3 USB ports are usable. So I can only use 1 USB per time and only WIFI for the network connection.
Since Debian provides an unofficial netinst image for i386/amd64/powerpc with the non-free firmware, I go and download the ISO[2] and make a bootable USB installer.
But when I during the installation process (on "detect network hardware" phase), debian-installer dialog asked me to load 2 firmware which is iwIwifi-2030-6.ucode and iwIwifi-2030-5.ucode .. I feel perplexed about this. So I checked the USB, it already have the firmware but with deb package format:
/firmware/firmware-iwlwifi_20201218-3_all.deb
/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-iwlwifi_20201218-3_all.deb
Seems this firmware load on the next stage which is after network setup and after do the partitioning stuff. I wonder why, since this is netinst I need network working from the during installation process, not after that.
Question :
a) Is it possible to do self modification on the installation script so the wifi chip will be available and working during the installation process so I can pull the packages that I want during installation from Debian mirror. If yes, how and if no, please suggest me some solutions that don't need me to fix LAN port, buy cable and router (since I use wifi hotspot from my phone)