Firmware in Debian ================== Problems currently ------------------ common to find hardware depends on loadable firmware a lot of that firmware is non-free distributable firmware is in Debian non-free more users with problematic hardware enabling non-free just for firmware more hardware depending on non-free. installer and live images need non-free or are not functional use case for firmware can determine impact, e.g. WiFi. installer may not need it but a lack of wifi with a live image is blocking. unofficial extra images - not well advertised. suggestion to split non-free - firmware-nonfree possibly, also -doc or -images. improvement over current but a lot of tools need updating. put some firmware onto official media from firmware-nonfree? Needs a GR to put the firmware into the media. Maybe blame the company/supplier? In practice the correct supplier cannot be reliably identified. Leave a sample message alongside the install log. Asking or enabling by default - installer should ensure the users know that non-free is required. kernel can identify and log, picked up by hardware-detect. Many kernel drivers request firmware even in cases where the hardware can work to arrange functionality updates. Current information cannot identify such cases as the ID is the same whether there is some firmware already applied or not or identify what firmware already exists. user experience of not having firmware available in the original image is very poor. Add a message that the device may work - if not, retry the installer. Then there will still be an issue if there is a security issue in the firmware. FSF endorsement if it runs with non-free firmware or written as non-modified to ROM. Links to the images we do prepare --------------------------------- Improve documentation to include alternative hardware solutions, like a USB WiFi device. Such hardware is very hard to identify as chipsets without changing the ID. Improving the prompts and docs when the non-free interrupt happens often easier to simply download the non-free installer image. d-i offering users the opportunity to spam hardware vendors and Ian's senator about non-free firmware Identifiable hardware: consumer protection to identify actual chipsets? Already using the hardware outside of the marketing list of supported operating systems. User does not necessarily choose the device, so the documentation needs to be careful about what the user can realistically do. Specific URLs for particular identifiers output by the installer. there is an expert option (or error condition) offers non-free as option. ship but do not advertise a tarball of all non-free firmware. build a list of identifier and firmware whilst systems are running? new components: main contrib non-free non-free-firmware or keep non-free but split non-free into non-free/firmware non-free/games non-free/other sections.