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Debian 12 “Bookworm”

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Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#21
post #12
post #5

Congratulations to the Debian team! An important change appears to be the inclusion of non-free firmware by default in the official install image for the first time, as a result of this vote: https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003 Intriguing. I feel a little torn on this. One the one hand, I appreciate being able to install Debian from an official image onto a bothersome device. On the other, I can't help but feel…

For devices which have firmware, does it matter whether the firmware is loaded by the OS rather than hardcoded inside the device? The former at least gives an opportunity to fix bugs. And if I'm not mistaken, this isn't about kernel blobs (which run on the CPU as kernel code), only code that gets loaded on devices (including CPU microcode).

There is a difference from legal point. If the firmware is hardcoded in device, you do not need to accept any license contract with IP holder. You do not need to copy it, and your right to run it is implied from ownership of the device. If the firmware is independent part bundled with OS, then anyone who wants to run it or even just distribute the OS must accept the license.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#22
post #5

Congratulations to the Debian team! An important change appears to be the inclusion of non-free firmware by default in the official install image for the first time, as a result of this vote: https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003 Intriguing. I feel a little torn on this. One the one hand, I appreciate being able to install Debian from an official image onto a bothersome device. On the other, I can't help but feel…

> On the other, I can't help but feel we're losing something when even a purist distribution like Debian is forced to concede in the fight against proprietary firmware blobs.

The software needs hardware to run, and the whole point of the software is to make the hardware useful. If you can't use the hardware, what's the point of the software?

In my book, freedom is a function of usefulness. No amount of redistributable source code has any value to me if I can't run it.

Enabling the use of hardware I already own is not a compromise, it's a solution. It's what operating systems exist for. Debian is fulfilling its primary function. I'm glad that this necessity was finally recognised.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#23

Do you recommend switching from Ubuntu TLS to this one? Even to a heavy LXC and multipass user? What had kept me on Ubuntu so far has been their out of box laptop support (I.e. WiFi drivers).

Moved back to Debian because of lxc on Ubuntu requiring snaps. Turns out same problem on Debian. Snapd consumes 100% cpu. All. The. Time. Hoping Bookworm will solve it. Else I will be moving to Archlinux, which has lxc without snapd.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#24
A bit offtopic... are there any distros besides PoPOS that comes with the proprietary Nvidia drivers preinstalled? I tried to use (live image) Debian on an RTX 4070 PC and nothing worked just black screen after GRUB. PoPOS works out of the box but honestly I'd prefer something more simple as Debian.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#25

Do you recommend switching from Ubuntu TLS to this one? Even to a heavy LXC and multipass user? What had kept me on Ubuntu so far has been their out of box laptop support (I.e. WiFi drivers).

I switched away from Ubuntu when they started putting advertisements in the motd and login screens.

That didn't bother me much as it is "advertisement" about things related to my system.

What I did not like was Firefox taking 20s to start.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#26
But it's /not/ released though. Their own news section mentions that cd images are still being built, which seems like something that should have happened already. There's nothing but 11.7 available for download.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched away from Ubuntu when they started putting advertisements in the motd and login screens.

That didn't bother me much as it is "advertisement" about things related to my system. What I did not like was Firefox taking 20s to start.

No I’m not talking about useful things like last login, average cpu, etc. they were advertising their cloud products.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#28
post #12
post #5

Congratulations to the Debian team! An important change appears to be the inclusion of non-free firmware by default in the official install image for the first time, as a result of this vote: https://www.debian.org/vote/2022/vote_003 Intriguing. I feel a little torn on this. One the one hand, I appreciate being able to install Debian from an official image onto a bothersome device. On the other, I can't help but feel…

For devices which have firmware, does it matter whether the firmware is loaded by the OS rather than hardcoded inside the device? The former at least gives an opportunity to fix bugs. And if I'm not mistaken, this isn't about kernel blobs (which run on the CPU as kernel code), only code that gets loaded on devices (including CPU microcode).

There is a little ritual we do here from time to time where someone writes a comment that starts something like "Well, I didn't expect Stallman would be right about [issue now being reported on] but he predicted this years ago".

If it can go wrong it will, and if software isn't free then its owners will do things that the users really do not like. In this case, if they can fix bugs they can reduce functionality post-hoc. That is consequential. It is better to have freedom or certainty as to what a device does.

Re: Debian 12 “Bookworm”

#29
post #18

Testing this out in a VM. I want to move away from Ubuntu (honestly, from SNAPs)

I'm also considering this, but I'm a little afraid of being stuck in the slow lane when it comes to software updates. I'm aware of Backports, but I'm led to believe it has a somewhat limited selection.

Perhaps this is a good opportunity to try a combination of Debian, for general system stability, and Nix, for specific tools where I need newer releases? Has anyone tried this combination before? If so, how did you find it?

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