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[Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
- oswaldkelso
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Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
It's like this. Imagine you're swimming in a lovely pool of crystal clear water... The pool may not be so big but it's so clean you can drink from it. Then WTF!
Someone wants to take a dump in the pool. Now we might have a turd in the pool. What choices do we have?
1. Get out the pool swim in another cleaner pool : fsf free distro
2. Try and swim around it. : currently Debian main
3. Remove it to another pool : Debian contrib/nonfree
4. Eat the turd : Might be very tasty, but it will lead to 5
5. Death of Debian
edit:
If one has free hardware and free software "hard to install" does not exist. Spend time and money where it's needed. I've been trying to run both for so long that the question is almost irrelevant.
Someone wants to take a dump in the pool. Now we might have a turd in the pool. What choices do we have?
1. Get out the pool swim in another cleaner pool : fsf free distro
2. Try and swim around it. : currently Debian main
3. Remove it to another pool : Debian contrib/nonfree
4. Eat the turd : Might be very tasty, but it will lead to 5
5. Death of Debian
edit:
If one has free hardware and free software "hard to install" does not exist. Spend time and money where it's needed. I've been trying to run both for so long that the question is almost irrelevant.
Free Software Matters
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
FLUKE?! You mean, the exorbitantly priced brand? Well, if one wants to impress the gullible and naive, one can choose to impress.'ve used Hantek oscilloscopes - their firmware is littered with bugs (starting from little bugs in GUI and ending with broken fourier transform or software bandwith limiter) - better buy FLUKE
Openess has a LOT to do with industrial secrets as it is the opposite. Publishing how software should communicate with hardware can easily give insights regarding the hardware's architecture. Manufacturers do NOT want to risk that. Remember, there are very very intelligent people who can easily conclude how a piece of hardware works given enough hints.Openness of driver code has completely nothing to do with "industrial secrets regarding internal hardware functioning"
Dear respondent, like you and many others who use Linux, I depend entirely on it, but facts remain facts irrespective of denial.
Debian == { > 30, 000 packages }; Debian != systemd
The worst infection of all, is a false sense of security!
It is hard to get away from CLI tools.
The worst infection of all, is a false sense of security!
It is hard to get away from CLI tools.
- Head_on_a_Stick
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Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
So I take it you don't have a hard drive on your computer then? Stuxnet demonstrated that the controller firmware is well suited to malware payloads.oswaldkelso wrote:If one has free hardware
Even RAM will have firmware in future: https://www.devever.net/~hl/omi
deadbang
- oswaldkelso
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Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
Don't talk wet. It strikes me that the first thing to do if you were worried about unaudited code running on your machine would be don't install contrib/non-free and any non-free blobs.Head_on_a_Stick wrote:So I take it you don't have a hard drive on your computer then? Stuxnet demonstrated that the controller firmware is well suited to malware payloads.oswaldkelso wrote:If one has free hardware
Even RAM will have firmware in future: https://www.devever.net/~hl/omi
What has someone hacking in to my machine and installing dodgy malware got to do with Debian sticking non-free blobs in the install disk. If GCHQ/The Chinese/ Russians etc want to hack in to my PC or anyone elses I doubt there is anything we could do about it. The whole point of Main/contrib/non-free is about user choice. There are plenty options for people that want non-free if they RTFM. For people that don't care Ubuntu is over there >>--->
Free Software Matters
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
Ash init durbatulûk, ash init gimbatul,
Ash init thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
My oldest used PC: 1999 imac 333Mhz 256MB PPC abandoned by Debian
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Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
Well, FLUKE is definitely overpriced - I agree (at least +30..40% more than real HW value), but I've never found any software BUG in their equipment.edbarx wrote:FLUKE?! You mean, the exorbitantly priced brand? Well, if one wants to impress the gullible and naive, one can choose to impress.'ve used Hantek oscilloscopes - their firmware is littered with bugs (starting from little bugs in GUI and ending with broken fourier transform or software bandwith limiter) - better buy FLUKE
I think we have a misunderstanding here:edbarx wrote:Openess has a LOT to do with industrial secrets as it is the opposite. Publishing how software should communicate with hardware can easily give insights regarding the hardware's architecture. Manufacturers do NOT want to risk that. Remember, there are very very intelligent people who can easily conclude how a piece of hardware works given enough hints.Openness of driver code has completely nothing to do with "industrial secrets regarding internal hardware functioning"
1. I've just gave an example of AMD GPUs - try to guess how the vertex shaders are implemented in the HW basing only on the description of the corresponding registers ...
2. Having sufficient experience in HW designing, You don't need to read the driver code - in such case It's just sufficient to read the product flyer - and implement the advertised features in your own, most probably better way
Historical notes:
1. The first stable Ethernet card driver for nForce3/4 has been created for Linux - NVIDIA was unable to create stable driver for their own chipset
2. Microshit was unable to write a stable USB3.0 driver for Win7 (system crashes) - probably they have stolen the stable driver from Linux, adjusting the code for WDM (windows driver model) - they are very good at stealing the code and ideas.
Bill Gates: "(...) In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system."
The_full_story and Nothing_have_changed
The_full_story and Nothing_have_changed
Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
Interesting convo. Wondering how difficult it'd be to install Debian with eyes closed. They've even made provisions for visually impaired persons. Short of coming to someone's place and installing it for people, not sure what else the Debian project can be expected to do further.
Not shipping with nonfree has likely always been a founding principle .. I can't help but respect that. For those disinclined to make the slightest efforts or demonstrate any bit of technical competence can only say, awwww poor widdle fellas/felettes. Will spend the next 23secs of my life bawling eyes out over their plight n suffering.
Not shipping with nonfree has likely always been a founding principle .. I can't help but respect that. For those disinclined to make the slightest efforts or demonstrate any bit of technical competence can only say, awwww poor widdle fellas/felettes. Will spend the next 23secs of my life bawling eyes out over their plight n suffering.
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- Head_on_a_Stick
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Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
Fair comment. Sorry for the noise.oswaldkelso wrote:Don't talk wet.
deadbang
Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
This topic is very helpful to me.
Coming from Ubuntu family and Manjaro and others. I installed non-free and soon came to realize I have some missing firmware.
After spending the day looking at this I finally found some answers. There are several issues I encountered. debian installer mentioned non-free about wifi. That was the beginning. Found out I needed wifi along with bluetooth drivers.
There was something about a "yoyo" error, but now that's gone. I always wondered about the 200-500 megbyte firmware folder that Ubuntu has. I would just try and edit out what I thought was unneeded. I know what version of wifi, bluetooth I had. There's a tone of drivers that I will never need, hence the mega folder.
An Admin over at Manjaro told me not to remove any files from that folder because it will be rebuilt on the next update, and I was foolish for doing so.
Didn't know much about non-free or why the firmware folder was so large until I started reading this topic. Quite the learning experience!
I kept seeing this topic getting a lot of traction but never read it until today. Thanks for asking a question that I didn't know I needed.
Now I'm very glad I accidentally install a non-free debian.
Coming from Ubuntu family and Manjaro and others. I installed non-free and soon came to realize I have some missing firmware.
After spending the day looking at this I finally found some answers. There are several issues I encountered. debian installer mentioned non-free about wifi. That was the beginning. Found out I needed wifi along with bluetooth drivers.
that "i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin" error I couldn't get rid of until I issued a update-initramfs. Took me awhile to find that out.$ sudo dmesg -T|grep error
[Fri Mar 5 09:32:26 2021] i915 0000:00:02.0: Direct firmware load for i915/kbl_dmc_ver1_04.bin failed with error -2
[Fri Mar 5 09:32:27 2021] EXT4-fs (nvme0n1p4): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro
[Fri Mar 5 09:32:28 2021] r8169 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for rtl_nic/rtl8168g-2.fw failed with error -2
[Fri Mar 5 09:32:28 2021] bluetooth hci0: Direct firmware load for intel/ibt-17-16-1.sfi failed with error -2
There was something about a "yoyo" error, but now that's gone. I always wondered about the 200-500 megbyte firmware folder that Ubuntu has. I would just try and edit out what I thought was unneeded. I know what version of wifi, bluetooth I had. There's a tone of drivers that I will never need, hence the mega folder.
An Admin over at Manjaro told me not to remove any files from that folder because it will be rebuilt on the next update, and I was foolish for doing so.
Didn't know much about non-free or why the firmware folder was so large until I started reading this topic. Quite the learning experience!
I kept seeing this topic getting a lot of traction but never read it until today. Thanks for asking a question that I didn't know I needed.
Now I'm very glad I accidentally install a non-free debian.
Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
What I always found extremely unintuitive, is the disk partitioner. Since, usually, I have other installations on the same disk, I must always opt to use the manual partitioner. But I always end up not being able to continue with the installation except for the last two installations. Previously, I had to resort to using debootstrap to first install a very minimal base system, manually add to it files like /etc/network/interfaces and add a root user and a normal user. Then, after connecting to the internet, if allowed, I would continue installing the rest of the system manually.
The 'unintuitive' step was, that I did not realise I had to press enter before a dialog was displayed allowing me to make changes to various partition options like mount points, file system, label, etc.
I take it, it is my wetware that is to blame: ageing is unrelenting and my wetware is no longer that sharp.
The 'unintuitive' step was, that I did not realise I had to press enter before a dialog was displayed allowing me to make changes to various partition options like mount points, file system, label, etc.
I take it, it is my wetware that is to blame: ageing is unrelenting and my wetware is no longer that sharp.
Debian == { > 30, 000 packages }; Debian != systemd
The worst infection of all, is a false sense of security!
It is hard to get away from CLI tools.
The worst infection of all, is a false sense of security!
It is hard to get away from CLI tools.
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Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
I'm a little bit surprised: I'm always using the console to setup my RAID - perhaps You didn't realize that during installation it's still possible to to switch between TTY's (ctrl-alt-F<2..7>) - and f.e. use the tune2fs to configure the partitions/devices ...edbarx wrote:What I always found extremely unintuitive, is the disk partitioner (...)
Bill Gates: "(...) In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system."
The_full_story and Nothing_have_changed
The_full_story and Nothing_have_changed
Re: [Article] Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'?
LMAO wetware = brain, ... nice. I was like what the hell is wetware, did they come out with something, should I google ? Then it hit me ... looks like my wetware is getting kinda buggy too.
Don't remember why but pretty much from the start took to prepartitioning with something like gparted live or whatever setting up for installs. So not overly sure about the installers partitioner. Can see how it could be confusing though. At least it's got a confirmation dialogue etc.
Also at some point switched to a no more than 3 installs at any given time rule. Which now it's down to one. Debian long since cured me of the distro-hop, may briefly revisit some distro's like Linux Mint occasionally but never for long. Tend to keep a testing partition for the purpose ready to go just in case.
When get to that step of doing an install, designating partitions, think it's definitely a good time to double check and look twice before pressing buttons. Have always done the manually guided thing, thought of the automagic install options makes me uneasy and my teeth sweat.
Don't remember why but pretty much from the start took to prepartitioning with something like gparted live or whatever setting up for installs. So not overly sure about the installers partitioner. Can see how it could be confusing though. At least it's got a confirmation dialogue etc.
Also at some point switched to a no more than 3 installs at any given time rule. Which now it's down to one. Debian long since cured me of the distro-hop, may briefly revisit some distro's like Linux Mint occasionally but never for long. Tend to keep a testing partition for the purpose ready to go just in case.
When get to that step of doing an install, designating partitions, think it's definitely a good time to double check and look twice before pressing buttons. Have always done the manually guided thing, thought of the automagic install options makes me uneasy and my teeth sweat.
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