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 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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