On Tue, 2022-08-23 at 17:47 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > Now we're in a situation where non-free firmware is absolutely required for > basic functionality - without the Intel non-free firmware, you can't run > sound for a visually impaired user to install if you have some Intel laptops. A correction here; that Intel audio firmware is libre firmware with source code publicly available under a libre license. https://www.sofproject.org/ The problem is that the vendors for most devices that include the Intel hardware require Intel signatures on the firmware binaries. Some devices (Intel based Chromebooks and UP boards) allow firmware binaries to be signed by a "community" private key that is public. In the future Intel may enable a scenario similar to Secure Boot's Machine Owner Key setup, where device owners can add new signing keys. https://github.com/thesofproject/sof/issues/5814 In that situation, Debian could sign the audio firmware binaries instead and allow users to sign their own modified firmware binaries. > The free installer is ideal for virtualisation only because it's > sitting on top of a bunch of idealised hardware. It could also be useful for devices that run libre firmware, such as Raptor Computing's ppc64el devices, although Debian does not have packages of the libre firmware projects for these devices so in practice it isn't yet useful for those scenarios. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
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