tried this recently on a macbook air without an ethernet port - it's actually not even as simple as downloading the relevant .deb on a flash drive and moving it

tried this recently on a macbook air without an ethernet port - it's actually not even as simple as downloading the relevant .deb on a flash drive and moving it over, as the default .deb will, sometimes, insist on downloading the actual firmware blob from the manufacturer during the install process! I refuse to pay for a USB ethernet adapter which I will use once, so I'm sticking with virtual machines for now. I agree, normal humans simply don't put up with this stuff - in the end, even I didn't!