Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> writes: > Many common laptops in the last 5-10 years don't come with wired > ethernet; it's becoming rarer over time. They ~all need firmware > loading to get onto the network with wifi. Many now need firmware for > working non-basic video, and audio also needs firmware on some of the > very latest models. The world has changed here, and I think your > perceptions may be out of date. I recall that it took ~5 years until hardware (usually audio, video, network cards) was well supported with stable releases of free software distributions in the 1990's. Often it was never possible to get some hardware to work with free software, especially laptops. This has pretty much been the same since then. I see no signs of this ever changing while new hardware that requires non-free software is introduced. It takes time until free software works with hardware made by cooperative manufacturers, and longer for uncooperative manufacturers. I don't consider this a problem a free OS can solve. Maybe the expectations of what hardware Debian should work on has changed, but my perception is not that the situation was significantly different 5, 10, 15 or 20 years ago. I accept that we will have different views of this. /Simon
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