41–50 of 241 posts
will installing over the internet work without DNS resolution?
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 fin…
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…
I was involved in the discussion, and I'm also torn on that issue, but at least you can disable installation of non-free firmware and install Debian without any non-free software. On the other hand, firmware is a convoluted issue. It was always present, but became increasingly visible over the years. While I'm a strong Free Software supporter, firmware is one of the hardest parts to convert, because of the IP it enta…
At the same time, you have a good point, these decisions are difficult and need to be very carefully weighted. Debian and RedHat are the two distributions that everybody else always ends up following so a major departure from established policy there has potentially huge impact downstream.
It's not exciting, but a fair amount of the time, this is what people expect from their operating system. Support my hardware, give me the software I need, and stay out of my way otherwise. And that is what Debian does very well.
Finally with init system alternatives or do they still shove systemd down our throat (if so I'll stick to devuan gnu/linux instead)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happened?
- Tried 23.04 and found too many bugs (I guess this doesn't count) - Some day 22.04 randomly started without GUI and I couldn't get it back either with ubuntu-desktop and startx - I installed a Python package without a virtual environment and it somehow interfered with system Python, bootloader broke It's possible that those errors were recoverable but I'm not a linux expert and I couldn't repair it after ~2h of stac…
Finally with init system alternatives or do they still shove systemd down our throat (if so I'll stick to devuan gnu/linux instead)?
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…
As far as I'm aware, nothing has recently changed in this regard. It's more of a reflection on the mentality of young members, those who tend to treat software as if it's in a vacuum, separate from all the social and moral concerns of the meatspace.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The legal system sometimes has definitions of copying that aren't that straightforward. I've seen in a copyright context judges talk about a computer loading software into RAM being copying.
Intel microcode comes with a license: https://bugs.gentoo.org/664134