Re: Changing how we handle non-free firmware

[Ansgar <ansgar@43-1.org>]

On Fri, 2022-08-19 at 12:19 +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 18, 2022 at 08:58:21PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> > system will *also* be configured to use the non-free-firmware
> > component by default in the apt sources.list file.
> 
> What's the rationale for this one?
> 
> I think it would make more sense to only configure the system to enable
> the non-free-firmware component if the installer determines that
> packages from that component are useful for the running system (or if
> the user explicitly asked to do so).

I think this would be confusing: detachable hardware (e.g., USB
devices) would work or not work depending on whether it was connected
at installation time. At least for amd64 it wouldn't make a different
either way due to the microcode firmware packages.

For the same reason the system should probably install all (reasonable)
firmware by default, just like we install all kernel drivers even for
devices that are not present on the target system.

Ansgar