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- sorting out non-free firmware- sorting out non-free firmwarePosted Jun 20, 2005 16:56 UTC (Mon) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989)Parent article: Debian release team meeting minutes
Under gentoo, I have nvidia and prism54 binary drivers loading.
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- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 20, 2005 17:25 UTC (Mon) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link] Yeah, it's not a good situation to be in. If possible, the best strategy is to avoid being stuck with hardware that doesn't work with Linux, which is why I put together this site:
It's a lot easier to focus on the few things that don't work than try and keep up with all the stuff that does.
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 20, 2005 17:33 UTC (Mon) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] After a quick look at that site-- you list instabilities and brokenness.
What I'd really like to see is also a list of what works with just *free* drivers. I know that some people think I'm Spawn of the Devil and Trying to Undermine Practical Linux In The Name of Fanaticism for saying this, but I want to avoid non-free drivers on my Linux distro if at all possible.
Right now, I think this means that the fastest video card I can run is the Radeon 9200. However, I have become very confused as to the status of video cards and so forth, because most places one looks one gets info about the non-free drivers you can download.
There *are* some of us out there who want to have as-free-as-possible Linux distros with lots of stuff working. It'd be nice to have as central a clearinghouse as possible that really makes a clean distinction between "not supported", "supported only with proproprietary drivers", and "supported".
-Rob
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 20, 2005 18:00 UTC (Mon) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link] I don't consider something to be 100% Linux Compatible unless it works with free drivers. For instance, we don't remove entries on the site where people have "managed to get it working with ndiswrapper" or "nvidia lets you download a binary driver". I think it is fair to mention those solutions (rather than just hiding and pretending they don't exist because they're not free), for those who are desperate and don't care as much wether it's free or not.
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 21, 2005 14:47 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] Ok how about a site that lists the cards that do work.. even if it is ashorter list. Trying to find a working wireless pcmcia card that doesnt use ndiswrappers seems to need a work of google exploration that I have at least failed :).
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 21, 2005 19:56 UTC (Tue) by davidw (subscriber, #947) [Link] Usually there are a lot more things that *do* work than the few things that don't work.
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 23, 2005 19:56 UTC (Thu) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link] Except that you don't necessarily know until you buy the card, take it home, spend a few hours trying to get it to work, and then finally taking it back to the store. That describes my recent experience trying to get a LinkSys wireless card working in my laptop. Fortunately, I had an old card known to work that I'd borrowed from someone I work with, and which I ultimately bought from him to spare me the hassle of finding a new card that works.
The bulk of the wireless cards out there might very well work perfectly with Linux, but many of them seem no longer to be on the market. Even hardware guides from December were recommending cards that I couldn't find at someplace like Staples or Office Depot.
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 20, 2005 17:26 UTC (Mon) by lordsutch (subscriber, #53) [Link] I think this entry means that Debian is going to sort out the inclusion of this stuff in the supposed-to-be-DFSG-free kernel-image packages, not that Debian is going to stop allowing non-free firmware to be used in Debian (which would be pretty hard to do anyway).
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 21, 2005 2:09 UTC (Tue) by simon_kitching (guest, #4874) [Link] Yep, that's my understanding too. At the moment, there are some devices for which open-source drivers are available, but where the device itself needs to be sent a closed-source firmware driver before it can be used. This isn't a major concern for even the most rabid open-source fan; external devices that have a properly documented interface are fine even when their internal software isn't available. But the current implementation is for the firmware blob to be built in to the driver - and if the driver is compiled into the kernel then the closed-source blob is part of the kernel image which quite a few people object to.
The proposed solution, as I understand it, is to provide a facility where drivers can send a request to user-space to fetch the binary blob. The driver itself can then be compiled into the kernel without problems, while the closed-source blob can be apt-get installed from a non-free repository. There are issues, though, like when such a driver wants to initialise itself before the filesystem is available...
NB: I'm not an expert on these issues; corrections are welcome.
Firmware loading Posted Jun 21, 2005 9:51 UTC (Tue) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] There already is load-firmware-from-userspace support in the kernel, and quite a few drivers use it.
The problem is converting the remaining drivers and submitting that to the kernel maintainers. This is a problem because you don't want to do that if you don't have the hardware to test your changes with. :-/
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 22, 2005 3:11 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] The other point which needs to be made is that the copyright (and patents,if any) holder of such a binary blob should give clear permission for it to distributed freely, loaded into hardware, and executed by the hardware.
- sorting out non-free firmware Posted Jun 21, 2005 7:56 UTC (Tue) by jonth (subscriber, #4008) [Link] Umm... I'm currently running Debian unstable, and I see the prism drivers just fine.
$ locate prism54.ko
I've no idea if they work - I have an Atheros based card, whose drivers aren't part of the mainline kernel.
prism54 is for full-MAC only Posted Jun 21, 2005 16:11 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] The prism54 driver only works with devices that support "full-MAC" firmware. Devices that require "thin-MAC" firmware are not supported. More details in the Wireless HOWTO by Jean Tourrilhes.
prism54 is for full-MAC only Posted Jun 22, 2005 3:14 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065) [Link] What I have always wondered is how you can tell the difference? Often thehardware manufacturer changes things without changing the name of the product. I'm not going to be able to look at the chip ids or serial numbers before I buy something.
I wish I could find an a/b/g PCMCIA card which worked with GPL drivers...
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