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These days I use https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ Because despite the rapid dismissal fr

by ebg13 7y ago

These days I use https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/ Because despite the rapid dismissal from these other yahoos, finding an image with WiFi firmware from the front page is a nightmare maze of wrong links and secret knowledge.

ChikkaChiChi 7y ago
That's fantastic :)
lottin 7y ago
> cp iso_file_name_here /dev/sd<your_usb_key_dev_id> ; sync Didn't know you could do that.
- ebg13 7y ago
  Yeah. Apparently cp got a lot smarter about isos at some point? Like basically everything else GNU/Linux, I'd never have guessed if some random website didn't say to try it. (I can't respond to you person responding to me, but I meant that I think cp being able to write a working image directly to a dev was not always true, and people always used dd for that before)
  - throwaway8941 7y ago
    It has nothing to do with cp being smart. You can do the same thing with dd, or simply with shell redirection (cat >/…) It works only for hybrid ISOs. Not every ISO supports this, although many do.
- tuldia 7y ago
  I guess pretty much any tool that copies files will do that too. I like that!
tuldia 7y ago
Wifi firmwares are non-free and are not included in the official iso for a reason. Search for "debian non-free iso" and you probably will find what you are looking for. > ...nightmare maze of wrong links and secret knowledge. Please, don't exaggerate.
- yebyen 7y ago
  I think it's actually important to understand how much the computer manufacturers don't really appear to want the free state to become the default. (Not from a "look at these jerks" perspective, but from a benchmarking perspective.) The project is explicitly about free software, so you should not be able to walk in the door and casually/accidentally walk out with non-free software. But more importantly, it should be a fairly straightforward process to identify "how many non-free sources did I need to incorporate in order to make my piece of 2004 hardware boot and run acceptably?" vs "how many ... in 2019?" One of the ideals of the Debian distro is also reproducibility, for reasons I won't go into since it's not particularly relevant, but for anyone who hasn't seen it before already: https://isdebianreproducibleyet.com/ https://isdebianreproducibleyet.com/ The non-free parts will (potentially, depending on what kind of non-free I guess...) always keep this number under 100% I love the Debian that Gotham Needs, I've never seen this, and the big red asterisk on "should" handles this concern neatly ;)
- ebg13 7y ago
  > Wifi firmwares are non-free and are not included in the official iso for a reason. And the result is that 99.99% of people can't get 99.99% freedom because of 0.01% of people doubling down on the 0.01% of freedom. I love Debian, but I consider that gatekeeping a great crime against regular people who could be empowered and informed from minimal freedom to nearly total freedom instead of kept out by arcanity and hardlining. That's why I like the link I posted. Because it says "this will actually work on your computer" AND also informs you about user freedom and the harm of proprietary device drivers. > Please, don't exaggerate. Let's perform an exercise, shall we? Starting from www.debian.org, reading from top left to bottom right as the English language is read, how many words must you pass over, how many links must you pass over, which links do you have to click, and how do you know to click those links and not the other ones in order to find an iso that installs on a market standard laptop over WiFi? The decision tree is much deeper than you acknowledge.

by ebg13 7y ago

ChikkaChiChi 7y ago

That's fantastic :)

lottin 7y ago

> cp iso_file_name_here /dev/sd<your_usb_key_dev_id> ; sync Didn't know you could do that.

ebg13 7y ago
Yeah. Apparently cp got a lot smarter about isos at some point? Like basically everything else GNU/Linux, I'd never have guessed if some random website didn't say to try it. (I can't respond to you person responding to me, but I meant that I think cp being able to write a working image directly to a dev was not always true, and people always used dd for that before)
- throwaway8941 7y ago
  It has nothing to do with cp being smart. You can do the same thing with dd, or simply with shell redirection (cat >/…) It works only for hybrid ISOs. Not every ISO supports this, although many do.
tuldia 7y ago
I guess pretty much any tool that copies files will do that too. I like that!

tuldia 7y ago

Wifi firmwares are non-free and are not included in the official iso for a reason. Search for "debian non-free iso" and you probably will find what you are looking for. > ...nightmare maze of wrong links and secret knowledge. Please, don't exaggerate.

yebyen 7y ago
I think it's actually important to understand how much the computer manufacturers don't really appear to want the free state to become the default. (Not from a "look at these jerks" perspective, but from a benchmarking perspective.) The project is explicitly about free software, so you should not be able to walk in the door and casually/accidentally walk out with non-free software. But more importantly, it should be a fairly straightforward process to identify "how many non-free sources did I need to incorporate in order to make my piece of 2004 hardware boot and run acceptably?" vs "how many ... in 2019?" One of the ideals of the Debian distro is also reproducibility, for reasons I won't go into since it's not particularly relevant, but for anyone who hasn't seen it before already: https://isdebianreproducibleyet.com/ https://isdebianreproducibleyet.com/ The non-free parts will (potentially, depending on what kind of non-free I guess...) always keep this number under 100% I love the Debian that Gotham Needs, I've never seen this, and the big red asterisk on "should" handles this concern neatly ;)
ebg13 7y ago
> Wifi firmwares are non-free and are not included in the official iso for a reason. And the result is that 99.99% of people can't get 99.99% freedom because of 0.01% of people doubling down on the 0.01% of freedom. I love Debian, but I consider that gatekeeping a great crime against regular people who could be empowered and informed from minimal freedom to nearly total freedom instead of kept out by arcanity and hardlining. That's why I like the link I posted. Because it says "this will actually work on your computer" AND also informs you about user freedom and the harm of proprietary device drivers. > Please, don't exaggerate. Let's perform an exercise, shall we? Starting from www.debian.org, reading from top left to bottom right as the English language is read, how many words must you pass over, how many links must you pass over, which links do you have to click, and how do you know to click those links and not the other ones in order to find an iso that installs on a market standard laptop over WiFi? The decision tree is much deeper than you acknowledge.