Re:I Love Arch, but GNU Guix Is My New Distro
by detaro on Saturday November 20, 2021 @03:43PM
(#29291668)
Then why is the reasoning in the linked email given as
> Another significant change in this release is that it was pointed out
that there were error messages in Linux suggesting users to update x86
CPU microcode. Since such microcode is non-Free Software, such messages
don't belong in GNU Linux-libre.
That reads very much as "we don't want to encourage users to consider updating microcode". Your argument also seems unlikely since distros ship the microcode as an extra package that gets picked up by the kernel, so clearly the ability to not upload microcode if the user doesn't provide it is there. (It makes sense that is that way and a different situation than the drivers your link discusses, since the device runs without a microcode update, whereas peripherals that need blobs often won't run at all without them)
> Another significant change in this release is that it was pointed out that there were error messages in Linux suggesting users to update x86 CPU microcode. Since such microcode is non-Free Software, such messages don't belong in GNU Linux-libre.
That reads very much as "we don't want to encourage users to consider updating microcode". Your argument also seems unlikely since distros ship the microcode as an extra package that gets picked up by the kernel, so clearly the ability to not upload microcode if the user doesn't provide it is there. (It makes sense that is that way and a different situation than the drivers your link discusses, since the device runs without a microcode update, whereas peripherals that need blobs often won't run at all without them)