Re: Making Debian available, non-free promotor
On 29/01/2021 03:23, Yao Wei wrote: Hi, Could there be the way that, with installer unable to connect to the internet, it detects the list of missing blobs, and generate a webpage in the thumb drive, and let user plug in another flash drive to download them. I agree with this idea, it would be really helpful, in fact the step in the installer that asks for a driver disk could perhaps be removed, So in terms of extra steps remove one, add this. Perhaps however as there is also an automated install / unintended install option this could be part of that too so subsequent installs could pull in the extra drivers once downloaded. Paul At then, we can let users download the missing drivers from the generated webpage, like the following: Additional packages for the network interface == As Debian is the universal operating system, we consider both users and free software important. However, the network device of the computer requires firmware that is not available in the installation media, because these are considered non-free according to our guideline. We encourage you to get devices that respects your freedom. Meanwhile, you can either try another device that's known good using only free software, or download the .deb package(s) linked below and put into the same place this file resides: --- firmware-iwlwifi - for: Network Controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 - https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/firmware-iwlwifi I realize that it is an additional step that may stop users from using Debian. But if we do not want to lower the priority of free software in favor to the user, we have to increase the usability for people with non-free devices in DFSG-only realm. Just 2 cents, Yao Wei -- Paul Sutton https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/ OpenPGP: 4350 91C4 C8FB 681B 23A6 7944 8EA9 1B51 E27E 3D99 Fosdem 2021 6th-7th Feb 2021 : https://fosdem.org/2021 LibrePlanet 2021 - March 20th - 21st - https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Main_Page OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Making Debian available, non-free promotor
Hi, Paul Sutton wrote: > > > On 29/01/2021 03:23, Yao Wei wrote: > > Hi, > > > > Could there be the way that, with installer unable to connect to the > > internet, it detects the list of missing blobs, and generate a webpage > > in the thumb drive, and let user plug in another flash drive to download > > them. > > I agree with this idea, it would be really helpful, in fact the step in > the installer that asks for a driver disk could perhaps be removed, So > in terms of extra steps remove one, add this. Again: a mechanism doing exactly this is already there, and it's documented here: https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch06s04.en.html -- Holger Wansing PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508 3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076
Re: Making Debian available, non-free promotor
Yao Wei writes: > At then, we can let users download the missing drivers from the > generated webpage, like the following: > >> Additional packages for the network interface >> == >> >> As Debian is the universal operating system, we consider both users >> and free software important. However, the network device of the >> computer requires firmware that is not available in the installation >> media, because these are considered non-free according to our >> guideline. >> >> We encourage you to get devices that respects your freedom. Should this message also be shown when non-free firmware is preinstalled in the system for educational purposes? Or do devices that have pre-installed non-free firmware respect the user's freedom? As long as the users doesn't look and doesn't hear about it, it's not there after all (two-wise-monkey-free / FSF-free?). The best example probably are TiVo devices which don't have user-upgradable firmware and thus should be called "freedom respecting" ;-) We could also recommend users to just install Debian in a VM which abstracts away the hardware, e.g., in a VM under Windows. This also respects user freedom in the same sense as above as Windows is usually preinstalled. (And AFAIU on modern systems Debian will usually run in some partition anyway and not have full hardware access, so it already runs in a "VM" of sorts.) >> Meanwhile, you can either try another device that's known good using >> only free software, or download the .deb package(s) linked below and >> put into the same place this file resides: >> >> --- >> >> firmware-iwlwifi >> - for: Network Controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8265 / 8275 >> - https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/firmware-iwlwifi iwlwifi does work fine with just free software just like hard disks and similar? Ansgar
Re: Making Debian available - patch for webwml
Hi Holger, On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 10:53:54AM +0100, Holger Wansing wrote: > FYI: a patch has been applied in the meantime, adding such hint to nearly all > d.o pages, which have links to download images [eg] > www.debian.org/distrib/ > to make users aware of those images. very cool, thank you very much! I'm still a bit sad we call the non-free images "unofficial" instead of "non-free", but hey, todays presentation is much better than last months already! IOW: I think we should call our non-free images our official non-free images. But still, yay progress! -- cheers, Holger ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ holger@(debian|reproducible-builds|layer-acht).org ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ PGP fingerprint: B8BF 5413 7B09 D35C F026 FE9D 091A B856 069A AA1C ⠈⠳⣄ "Climate change" is an euphenism. "Global warming" as well. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Making Debian available, non-free promotor
On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 01:38:24PM +0100, Ansgar wrote: > Yao Wei writes: > >> We encourage you to get devices that respects your freedom. > > Should this message also be shown when non-free firmware is preinstalled > in the system for educational purposes? > > Or do devices that have pre-installed non-free firmware respect the > user's freedom? As long as the users doesn't look and doesn't hear > about it, it's not there after all (two-wise-monkey-free / FSF-free?). > The best example probably are TiVo devices which don't have > user-upgradable firmware and thus should be called "freedom respecting" > ;-) > > We could also recommend users to just install Debian in a VM which > abstracts away the hardware, e.g., in a VM under Windows. This also > respects user freedom in the same sense as above as Windows is usually > preinstalled. (And AFAIU on modern systems Debian will usually run in > some partition anyway and not have full hardware access, so it already > runs in a "VM" of sorts.) > It is to describe the DFSG-freedom we value. I know that having upgradable non-free firmware is better than having non-upgradable firmware in case if there's vulnerability we need to address. If we find it not suitable, we can remove the text if that is going to be implemented. Of course it is easier to use Debian inside VM, but that is not the situation we would like to address. > iwlwifi does work fine with just free software just like hard disks and > similar? This listing is to list the packages that the user needs to download into the flash drive. In my case, iwlwifi requires additional firmware so I picked it as an example. And, the reason that I am picking networking, is that when system is installed with networking, the user can then download packages for other devices that require non-free packages to work. Usability wise, the message on the non-free firmware loading in debian-installer is not prominent enough, that people needs to discover it through manual. (This is also the case of the behavior in d-i that it installs sudo when root password is empty.) I would imagine that people just download ISO, install, and they would consult search engines for the problems they encounter, without realizing we have such function built into our installer. Thanks, Yao Wei signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: -1 (Re: Making Debian available)
Paul wrote: > >During install, the installer asks if you have a disk with drivers on >for this closed hardware, I don't know what it wants at this point. > >If we could insert a 2nd usb disk, or anything with the correct drivers >on, it may help. Argh. Pet peeve. It asks for a disk with *firmware* on it, not *drivers*. Please stop confusing the two. -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com "You can't barbecue lettuce!" -- Ellie Crane
Re: Making Debian available - patch for webwml
On 1/29/21 1:44 PM, Holger Levsen wrote: Hi Holger, On Thu, Jan 28, 2021 at 10:53:54AM +0100, Holger Wansing wrote: FYI: a patch has been applied in the meantime, adding such hint to nearly all d.o pages, which have links to download images [eg] www.debian.org/distrib/ to make users aware of those images. very cool, thank you very much! I'm still a bit sad we call the non-free images "unofficial" instead of "non-free", but hey, todays presentation is much better than last months already! IOW: I think we should call our non-free images our official non-free images. But still, yay progress! anecdotally, i installed buster on my wife's 13 year old i686 laptop yesterday morning (trying to refurbish it as a home-schooling device). the hardware is obviously pretty old (no x86_64!), but at least that made me hope that the wifi card might work out of the box. being fully aware of this thread (and just to be on the safe side), i checked how easy it was to find a i386 netinstaller images with non-free firmware. i'm sad to say that even though there has been obvious progress on the homepage¹, i failed. to be fair, i did find i386 images including non-free, but apparently only "full installation" ISOs, that (i suspected) wouldn't fit on my already crammed USB-stick. (i've been installing Debian since 1998 or so, and I don't think I ever used anything but the netinstaller. i'd like to keep it that way) of course, once i started the installer, it turned out that non-free firmware was indeed needed for the iwlwifi. so i copied one of the two mentioned firmware files (the other one was missing, so i assumed that the two were just different versions) from my own laptop (running sid) into a firmware/ directory on the USB stick, and started a-new. this time i was not prompted to insert a disk with the missing firmware (so providing the missing firmware was obviously pretty easy), only to find that i still could not connect to my WPA2-protected WiFi. so i just grabbed an old network cable from my bag of stuff, connected my own laptop to the old one, setup internet sharing, and from then it went kind of smoothly (apart from losing connection every other time, so it took a couple of attempts until the base system had been downloaded; but that might be due to the cable, or the rusty eth connector). after a successful installation i enabled non-free, grabbed the firmware-iwlwifi package, and since then everything seems to work splendidly (module that fan, that is making weird noises). fdmsrsa IOhannes ¹ note: i think "the page" (https://get.d.o) changed again since yesterday, and i now have been able to locate i386-netinstall+non-free images (although only after searching the page for "firmware" and then go daringly 3 more appalling pages (that reminded me fondly of ftp-directories and FAQs of yore) OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature
