[Mageia-dev] [RFC] radeon firmware in non-free

Thu May 31 06:06:58 CEST 2012

+
+
+On 30/05/12 09:38, Thierry Vignaud wrote:
+> Hi
+> 
+> I think we must discuss the following point for next release:
+> currently radeon firmwares are in non-free.
+> 
+> However this break havoc quite a lot of install b/c by default
+> non-free is not enabled.
+> 
+> 1) This makes the Mageia experience horrible on some machines
+>     (black screen, machines unusable by newbies (and worse
+>     unrecoverable by newbies), ...)
+>     Newer ATI/AMD cards cannot work w/o the needed firmware.
+>     That's also the issue with several network cards.
+>     (which makes network installation impossible by default)
+> 
+> 2) this is unlike the live-cd where we've those firmwares (and
+>     the proprietary drivers as well)
+> 
+> 3) This is unlike other "pure" FOSS distro such as Fedora
+>      which includes the firmwares.
+> 
+> So there're two kinds of Linux distro:
+> - those who provides free & proprietary drivers
+> - those who only provides free drivers, with the needed firmwares
+> 
+> Mageia choose to provides either the first experience (the live cd
+> case) or the worst one, the free drivers w/o the needed firmwares.
+> 
+> A lot of thing broke havoc when firmwares get split from kernels.
+> According to their licence (or their lack of license), we choose
+> to distribute them in:
+> - either kernel-firmware, always available and always installed
+> - or kernel-firmware-nonfree, unavailable and not installed by default
+> 
+> This make a lot of free drivers stop to work by default (at least with
+> the classic installer, it's OK with the livecd)
+> 
+> So we offer the choice between:
+> - either be able to choose between working proprietary driver and
+>   working free driver
+> - or to have non working free driver
+> This is _INSANE_.
+> 
+> I think It's time we reconsider this.
+> 
+> Firmwares do not run on the main CPU.
+> They're needed for additional chips where no one will ever
+> ever write a program for.
+>>From the main CPU/memory view point they're data.
+> 
+> I think we should offer the choice to:
+> - either be able to choose between working proprietary driver and
+>   working free driver
+> - or to have _working_ free driver
+>   (that is including the needed firmwares)
+> 
+> See you
+> 
+
+
+I personally think people should read before doing anything, cant expect
+people to throw a coaster into the computer and hit the go button
+computers are sophisticated complicated tools, not toasters
+
+Lemonzest
+
+
+