Head_on_a_Stick wrote:djk44883 wrote:...because you don't actually need a proprietary drive for basic video function. While installing, I was informed I needed a driver for wifi - basic function. Video functions, basically, without special drivers -- how else could you turn it on and see any thing.
My AMD graphics chip will not display the desktop at all unless the firmware is installed. We have had threads recently from a few other users suffering the same issue.
Back to my previous post about the installer and firmware:
Debian buster -- Installation Guide2.1.5. Graphics Hardware SupportWhether advanced graphics card features such as 3D-hardware acceleration or hardware-accelerated video are available, depends on the actual graphics hardware used in the system and in some cases on the installation of additional “firmware” images (see Section 2.2, “Devices Requiring Firmware”).
On modern PCs, having a graphical display usually works out of the box. In very few cases there have been reports about hardware on which installation of additional graphics card firmware was required even for basic graphics support, but these have been rare exceptions. For quite a lot of hardware, 3D acceleration also works well out of the box, but there is still some hardware that needs binary blobs to work well.
2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware With many graphics cards, basic functionality is available without additional firmware, but the use of advanced features requires an appropriate firmware file to be installed in the system.
If the debian-installer prompts for a firmware file and you do not have this firmware file available or do not want to install a non-free firmware file on your system, you can try to proceed without loading the firmware. There are several cases where a driver prompts for additional firmware because it may be needed under certain circumstances, but the device does work without it on most systems (this e.g. happens with certain network cards using the tg3 driver).
So, you shouldn't need firmware, but if you do - installer prompts for you to install it. That's what we get from Debian. This not working for you or others... makes this documentation obsolete?