Re: Firmware - what are we going to do about it?
bwt !
1st I've always saw Debian having brltty support from the start
2nd Just install the firmware instruction here and your problem will be
solved.
https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware
Stop blaiming other people when the problem is a lack of research on
your part and expectation all work "out of the box" in all situation.
Take destiny into your own hand.
On 2022-04-20 08:32, Polyna-Maude Racicot-Summerside wrote:
> Answer bellow this awful piece of text from someone who doesn't know how
> to make a space between line.
>
> On 2022-04-20 06:04, Devin Prater wrote:
>> I recently tried to install Debian onto my new laptop. It's an HP
>> Pavilian (can't remember the exact model sorry) with an AMD Rizon 5500
>> processor with integrated Radion graphic. All seemed to work well, until
>> I came to the detecting Internet stage of the install. It couldn't
>> detect my Wi-fi card. So then, I found the Non-free section and got the
>> CD version? I guess that's what I should have gotten? The DVD one is the
>> live environment right? See how confusion this can be? Anyway, I booted
>> that up, pressed s then Enter cause I'm blind, then began the install
>> again. The same thing happened. So apparently even the non-free images
>> don't contain all of the drivers. I know a driver for my card exists,
>> since Fedora has it. So, since Debian "won't work" on my system (that's
>> what a user *will* think), I went back to Windows, where I have all the
>> few games blind people can play, the MUD clients with sound packs,
>> Twitter/Mastodon/Telegram clients that were made by the blind, for the
>> blind, a screen reader with wide community support, and a DE with
>> developers focusingon accessibility. Of course, that's just my use case
>> as a blind person. Others may focus on the graphics card, Wi-fi, sound
>> card, power management (My battery will never run out of power according
>> to acpi), or CPU management.
>> Ah well. Maybe Ubuntu will have the Wi-fi card. I mean they are a
>> company but when a group of regular people don't give something that I
>> can even install without plugging in my phone, finishing install,
>> somehow finding the right driver for my Wi-fi card, and then finally
>> being able to use it, then the first thing people will do is go find
>> something else. They'll say "Okay well Debian is just for servers and
>> 'FossBros'," shake their head, and move on.
>> This is from a user's perspective. It's hard enough to get them to want
>> to use Linux. A lot of people don't even know you can change the
>> operating system on your computer! So then for them to try Debian, which
>> is probably one of, if not the most, accessible of all distros thanks to
>> our few Debian Accessibility team, and then find that their network card
>> isn't going to work, they'll run back to Windows. And to be clear, for a
>> blind person, the only thing Linux has over Windows at this point is
>> that you can print text *and* images to a Braille printer. You can't do
>> that in Windows without expensive software. All the games, software for
>> the blind, Twitter/Mastodon/Telegram clients, all that is on Windows. So
>> for a blind person, switching from all that is gonna be even harder. So
>> the first sign of resistance will send them back.
>> Also, should we have to work for Debian? Shouldn't it make our computing
>> life easier by at least including the stuff we need to use all parts of
>> our computer? Besides that, with computers becoming even more "secure"
>> with Microsoft working on a chip, AMD and Intel having their stuff,
>> we'll *have* to include nonfree stuff in Debian eventually. Might as
>> well do it now to make users' lives a little easier for practice.
>> Another thing I just thought of, I wonder if, when we find hardware in
>> the installer that we don't have drivers for, if we can search for
>> drivers on apt, including the nonfree section, and ask if the user wants
>> to install them? The user would probably have to connect their phone for
>> the Wi-fi bit, but then all the stuff could easily be installed.
>> Devin Prater
>> r.d.t.prater@gmail.com <mailto:r.d.t.prater@gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 20, 2022 at 2:49 AM Pirate Praveen <praveen@onenetbeyond.org
>> <mailto:praveen@onenetbeyond.org>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> 2022, ഏപ്രിൽ 19 5:57:46 AM IST, Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com
>> <mailto:steve@einval.com>>ൽ എഴുതി
>> >This tension extends to our installation and live media. As non-free is
>> >officially not considered part of Debian, our official media cannot
>> include
>> >anything from non-free. This has been a deliberate policy for many
>> years.
>> >Instead, we have for some time been building a limited parallel set of
>> >"unofficial non-free" images which include non-free firmware. These
>> non-free
>> >images are produced by the same software that we use for the
>> official images,
>> >and by the same team.
>> >
>> >There are a number of issues here that make developers and users
>> unhappy:
>> >
>> > 1. Building, testing and publishing two sets of images takes more
>> effort.
>>
>> Can we reduce the tests? Do we really need to test both images for
>> all cases?
>>
>> > 2. We don't really want to be providing non-free images at all, from a
>> > philosophy point of view. So we mainly promote and advertise
>> the preferred
>> > official free images. That can be a cause of confusion for
>> users. We do
>> > link to the non-free images in various places, but they're not
>> so easy to
>> > find.
>>
>> I'm fine making it easier to find.
>>
>> > 3. Using non-free installation media will cause more installations
>> to use
>> > non-free software by default. That's not a great story for us,
>> and we may
>> > end up with more of our users using non-free software and
>> believing that
>> > it's all part of Debian.
>>
>> So a separate non-free firmware section as you proposed could work.
>>
>> > 4. A number of users and developers complain that we're wasting
>> their time by
>> > publishing official images that are just not useful for a lot
>> (a majority?)
>> > of users.
>>
>> Isn't voluntary work being able to work on things you care and not
>> necessarily what majority wants?
>>
>> I can understand if the current volunteers that produce and test
>> fully free images don't want to continue and no one else step up.
>> Shouldn't this be a call for volunteers ?
>>
>> May be more people step in to maintain the free images if there is a
>> call for volunteers.
>>
>> >We should do better than this.
>> >
>> >Options
>> >=======
>> >
>> >The status quo is a mess, and I believe we can and should do things
>> >differently.
>> >
>> >I see several possible options that the images team can choose from
>> here.
>> >However, several of these options could undermine the principles of
>> Debian. We
>> >don't want to make fundamental changes like that without the clear
>> backing of
>> >the wider project. That's why I'm writing this...
>> >
>> > 1. Keep the existing setup. It's horrible, but maybe it's the best
>> we can do?
>> > (I hope not!)
>> >
>>
>> As I said earlier, making non-free more prominent and more
>> volunteers to maintain fully free images could work to reduce load
>> on existing volunteers.
>>
>> > 2. We could just stop providing the non-free unofficial images
>> altogether.
>> > That's not really a promising route to follow - we'd be making
>> it even
>> > harder for users to install our software. While ideologically
>> pure, it's
>> > not going to advance the cause of Free Software.
>>
>> I think we should continue creating non-free images.
>>
>> > 3. We could stop pretending that the non-free images are
>> unofficial, and maybe
>> > move them alongside the normal free images so they're published
>> together.
>> > This would make them easier to find for people that need them,
>> but is
>> > likely to cause users to question why we still make any images
>> without
>> > firmware if they're otherwise identical.
>>
>> This should be fine. This could be used as an opportunity to educate
>> users and recommending to choose hardware which works with free
>> images. We can highlight h-node.org <http://h-node.org> here.
>>
>> > 4. The images team technically could simply include non-free into
>> the official
>> > images, and add firmware packages to the input lists for those
>> images.
>> > However, that would still leave us with problem 3 from above
>> (non-free
>> > generally enabled on most installations).
>>
>> I don't think we should do this.
>>
>> > 5. We could split out the non-free firmware packages into a new
>> > non-free-firmware component in the archive, and allow a
>> specific exception
>> > only to allow inclusion of those packages on our official
>> media. We would
>> > then generate only one set of official media, including those
>> non-free
>> > firmware packages.
>>
>> I'm okay with it only if we don't get enough volunteers to maintain
>> two images.
>>
>> > (We've already seen various suggestions in recent years to
>> split up the
>> > non-free component of the archive like this, for example into
>> > non-free-firmware, non-free-doc, non-free-drivers, etc.
>> Disagreement
>> > (bike-shedding?) about the split caused us to not make any
>> progress on
>> > this. I believe this project should be picked up and completed.
>> We don't
>> > have to make a perfect solution here immediately, just
>> something that works
>> > well enough for our needs today. We can always tweak and
>> improve the setup
>> > incrementally if that's needed.)
>> >
>> >These are the most likely possible options, in my opinion. If you
>> have a better
>> >suggestion, please let us know!
>>
>> As mentioned earlier, call for volunteers to maintain two sets or
>> reducing the number of test cases (some cases only tested with
>> non-free and some tested only with free images)
>>
>> >I'd like to take this set of options to a GR, and do it soon. I
>> want to get a
>> >clear decision from the wider Debian project as to how to organise
>> firmware and
>> >installation images. If we do end up changing how we do things, I
>> want a clear
>> >mandate from the project to do that.
>> >
>> >My preference, and rationale
>> >============================
>> >
>> >Mainly, I want to see how the project as a whole feels here - this
>> is a big
>> >issue that we're overdue solving.
>> >
>> >What would I choose to do? My personal preference would be to go
>> with option 5:
>> >split the non-free firmware into a special new component and
>> include that on
>> >official media.
>> >
>> >Does that make me a sellout? I don't think so. I've been passionately
>> >supporting and developing Free Software for more than half my life. My
>> >philosophy here has not changed. However, this is a complex and nuanced
>> >situation. I firmly believe that sharing software freedom with our
>> users comes
>> >with a responsibility to also make our software useful. If users
>> can't easily
>> >install and use Debian, that helps nobody.
>> >
>> >By splitting things out here, we would enable users to install and
>> use Debian
>> >on their hardware, without promoting/pushing higher-level non-free
>> software in
>> >general. I think that's a reasonable compromise. This is simply a
>> change to
>> >recognise that hardware requirements have moved on over the years.
>> >
>> >Further work
>> >============
>> >
>> >If we do go with the changes in option 5, there are other things we
>> could do
>> >here for better control of and information about non-free firmware:
>> >
>> > 1. Along with adding non-free firmware onto media, when the
>> installer (or live
>> > image) runs, we should make it clear exactly which firmware
>> packages have
>> > been used/installed to support detected hardware. We could link
>> to docs
>> > about each, and maybe also to projects working on Free
>> re-implementations.
>>
>> Good idea.
>>
>> > 2. Add an option at boot to explicitly disable the use of the non-free
>> > firmware packages, so that users can choose to avoid them.
>> >
>> >Acknowledgements
>> >================
>> >
>> >Thanks to people who reviewed earlier versions of this document
>> and/or made
>> >suggestions for improvement, in particular:
>> >
>> > • Cyril Brulebois
>> > • Matthew Garrett
>> > • David Leggett
>> > • Martin Michlmayr
>> > • Andy Simpkins
>> > • Neil Williams
>> >
>>
>> --
>> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
>>
>
> No such confusion...
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware
>
> Here's a nice guide on how to install the firmware on ANY damn
> DVD/CD/USB/Pogo stick
>
> No there's both install DVD, install CD, live CD, live DVD, net install,
> etc...
>
> Even explanation on how to make your own boot disk.
>
> What did we do 30 years ago before crying for help on a mailing list ?
> We'd read the manual BEFORE trying out something.
> This still applies today.
>
--
Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside
-Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development
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