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Kind of off-topic, but do you know why they call drivers "firmware"? I thought "firmware" was the code loaded internally in the hardware, and "driver" was the s
by mehrdadn 6y ago
Kind of off-topic, but do you know why they call drivers "firmware"? I thought "firmware" was the code loaded internally in the hardware, and "driver" was the software in the OS that interacted with it (to "drive" it to do what it needs)? This confused me for a long time—I used to think "I've already updated all the firmware on all of my laptop's components, so I don't need extra bundled firmware" at some point, until I realized that's not what they talked about at all. Any idea why they call their drivers "firmware"? I feel like I might not be the only person who's been misled by this in the past.
- smcl 6y agoI think your original understanding is correct - what we're calling "drivers" are run by the host OS and CPU to interact with a peripheral over PCI, USB, SPI, OWI, whatever. And "firmware" is some special software required by the device itself to run (could be some ARM or MIPS binary or whatever arch is used by CPU(s) on the device). I guess that some peripherals have firmware on non-volatile storage while others require it provided by the host when they're initialized. So the "firmware" I required for my Thinkpad's wifi to work (and which was included in that Debian nonfree image) is this: https://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi https://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi update: actually on that Debian wiki there's a page called "Firmware" which explains things well https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware
- mehrdadn 6y agoOh interesting, I didn't realize that. Thanks!