Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)?

Re:Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)? by TekMol on Sunday June 18, 2017 @05:49AM (#14579866)

I upvoted this even though I am of two minds regarding this issue.

Missing wifi support is my number 1 reason why I don't use Debian on the Desktop. On the other hand, I don't like non-free software and like the concept of Debian to not include it.

An alternative could be to put more effort into supporting all wifi hardware by writng free drivers for it. I will post that as my Feature Request.

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Re:Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)? by avar on Sunday June 18, 2017 @06:06AM (#14579920)

The drivers are free and already in the kernel. I'm talking about firmware support.

You can still use Debian on the desktop, it has all the WiFi support e.g. Ubuntu has. It's just the installer that doesn't have parity since it's 100% free, working around it is a bit of a hassle as I described, but a one-time pain.

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Re:Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)? by TekMol on Sunday June 18, 2017 @07:11AM (#14580135)

What does "firmware support" mean? Is it not about installing software?

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Re:Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)? by bgladx64 on Sunday June 18, 2017 @07:33AM (#14580200)

Drivers are software that runs in the kernel to interface with hardware.

Firmware is software that runs on the actual hardware itself, in this case it runs on the microprocessor on the WiFi card

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Re:Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)? by kebolio on Sunday June 18, 2017 @07:48AM (#14580247)

firmware support involves supplying the binary blobs that the driver needs to upload to certain peripherals like intel wireless cards.

personally i would like to see non-free software kept out of the main disc images but the images including firmware being more visibly advertised and it made clear on the download pages what hardware requires it and who needs it.

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Re:Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)? by TekMol on Sunday June 18, 2017 @09:11AM (#14580491)

So the firmware for a certain WiFi card is the same, no matter if you use Linux or Windows of MacOS? And it is provided by the manufacturer of the Hardware?

And some WiFi cards works out of the box with Debian? Is that because the manufacturers of those cards provided the source of their firmware or because open source alternatives have been written by somebody else?

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Re:Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)? by catdog on Sunday June 18, 2017 @11:15AM (#14580979)

There are a few models that don't need a firmware blob or where the manufacturer provided source code for it (mostly pre ac Atheros chips).

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Re:Ask HN: What do you want to see in Debian 10 (“buster”)? by kebolio on Sunday June 18, 2017 @02:06PM (#14581951)

firmware is specific to chipset and are binary blobs supplied by the manufacturer. ath9k-supported and generally realtek cards don't need firmware; theo de raadt noticed the culture difference between american vendors like intel and broadcom who leave the functionality to the firmware so they can be first to market, and chinese vendors like realtek who take their time to best fit customer needs

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