4 ms·

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 loo

by 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.
- tuldia 7y ago
  > Starting from www.debian.org, reading from top left to bottom right as the English language is read... I guess you should start with the first link, the one that says "About Debian". There you can know what Debian is about and align your expectations. If you think it works for you, then go back to www.debian.org and do a ctrl+f and type "download", there is a big button in the top right corner. It is probably what you need (amd64, netinstall).
  - ebg13 7y ago
    All I hear you saying is that you think regular people with regular lives and regular products and regular concerns don't deserve to get almost total freedom from Debian because of that missing last little bit, and, too bad so sad, they should just go somewhere else. I disagree with that stance.
    - joana035 7y ago
      She didn't said that and you are being too dramatic. Certainly if you install Debian for a regular user, install the wifi firmware (available in non-free repo), everything will work and they will enjoy.
  - ink_13 7y ago
    It's not what most people probably need, though. A standard market laptop requires non-free firmware for the wifi to function and thus let the netinstaller proceed.
bsznjyewgd 7y ago
As a long time, on and off Debian user, I've actually never had debian-installer install firmware properly. For the longest time, using the minimal install image, putting the firmware debs (or loose files) in the correct directory just plain didn't work. I think at some point, it started working and I could use wifi instead of ethernet to install, but even now the installer still doesn't install AMD firmware, so some kernel modesetting funny business doesn't work and I just get a black screen on first boot (but the system is otherwise functional). The same applies to the firmware-included non-free image. I mean, I can (and do) manually apt-get the right firmware packages at some point, either popping a shell during install or after first boot, but it is definitely a maze of some kind, especially if you don't know what package contains the firmware you need.
Flip-per 7y ago
> Please, don't exaggerate. I am a software developer who uses Linux exclusively since about 2000 and has contributed indirectly to Debian. Last week I wanted to setup Debian on my new work laptop. Naively and without thinking much I downloaded the default image, so the wifi card didn't work. I was on holiday, abroad with friends. Even with both the buster and testing non-free images the wifi card didn't work. After three hours (downloading, installing a cd creator on a mac of a friend etc) I got frustrated, downloaded an Ubuntu image and it just worked.
- marmaduke 7y ago
  I think of Ubuntu as Debian + the yucky driver bits.
  - ebg13 7y ago
    In recent history, though, it was also + the yucky terminal advertising, secret Amazon searching, and Unity interface bits. Thankfully at least they gave up on Unity so that Gnome can progress faster.
    - disabled 7y ago
      Yeah, the Unity interface really messed up the recent releases of Ubuntu.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
seba_dos1 7y ago
Agreed. In rare cases when WiFi doesn't work right at first boot for me, I just attach a mobile phone or connect via ethernet, download one package and... connect via WiFi. It's just a very minor inconvenience - I prefer to know that official Debian iso is 100% free and having to manually opt-in for anything else.

by tuldia 7y ago

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.

tuldia 7y ago
> Starting from www.debian.org, reading from top left to bottom right as the English language is read... I guess you should start with the first link, the one that says "About Debian". There you can know what Debian is about and align your expectations. If you think it works for you, then go back to www.debian.org and do a ctrl+f and type "download", there is a big button in the top right corner. It is probably what you need (amd64, netinstall).
- ebg13 7y ago
  All I hear you saying is that you think regular people with regular lives and regular products and regular concerns don't deserve to get almost total freedom from Debian because of that missing last little bit, and, too bad so sad, they should just go somewhere else. I disagree with that stance.
  - joana035 7y ago
    She didn't said that and you are being too dramatic. Certainly if you install Debian for a regular user, install the wifi firmware (available in non-free repo), everything will work and they will enjoy.
- ink_13 7y ago
  It's not what most people probably need, though. A standard market laptop requires non-free firmware for the wifi to function and thus let the netinstaller proceed.

bsznjyewgd 7y ago

As a long time, on and off Debian user, I've actually never had debian-installer install firmware properly. For the longest time, using the minimal install image, putting the firmware debs (or loose files) in the correct directory just plain didn't work. I think at some point, it started working and I could use wifi instead of ethernet to install, but even now the installer still doesn't install AMD firmware, so some kernel modesetting funny business doesn't work and I just get a black screen on first boot (but the system is otherwise functional). The same applies to the firmware-included non-free image. I mean, I can (and do) manually apt-get the right firmware packages at some point, either popping a shell during install or after first boot, but it is definitely a maze of some kind, especially if you don't know what package contains the firmware you need.

Flip-per 7y ago

> Please, don't exaggerate. I am a software developer who uses Linux exclusively since about 2000 and has contributed indirectly to Debian. Last week I wanted to setup Debian on my new work laptop. Naively and without thinking much I downloaded the default image, so the wifi card didn't work. I was on holiday, abroad with friends. Even with both the buster and testing non-free images the wifi card didn't work. After three hours (downloading, installing a cd creator on a mac of a friend etc) I got frustrated, downloaded an Ubuntu image and it just worked.

marmaduke 7y ago
I think of Ubuntu as Debian + the yucky driver bits.
- ebg13 7y ago
  In recent history, though, it was also + the yucky terminal advertising, secret Amazon searching, and Unity interface bits. Thankfully at least they gave up on Unity so that Gnome can progress faster.
  - disabled 7y ago
    Yeah, the Unity interface really messed up the recent releases of Ubuntu.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

seba_dos1 7y ago

Agreed. In rare cases when WiFi doesn't work right at first boot for me, I just attach a mobile phone or connect via ethernet, download one package and... connect via WiFi. It's just a very minor inconvenience - I prefer to know that official Debian iso is 100% free and having to manually opt-in for anything else.