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

Thomas Backlund tmb at mageia.org
Wed May 30 11:46:25 CEST 2012


30.05.2012 12:23, Thierry Vignaud skrev:
> On 30 May 2012 11:09, Thomas Backlund<tmb at mageia.org>  wrote:
>>> 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.
>>
>> So its an installer issue.
>
> No it's a policy issue.
> media.cfg enforces not installing firmwares by default.
> But builders of live cds overrides this.
>
> Which is inconsistent
>

Well, it was a old design decision we followed for livecds...

> Maybe should we split firmwares in another medium that should:
> - be enabled by default
> - be included in the install ISOs
>
>>> 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)
>>
>>
>>
>> So people should think twice about what hw they want to buy/use.
>
> Come on you're trolling.
> What's more, _YOU_ are the one building live cds with proprietary drivers... :-)
>

Well, I have no problem dropping them from livecds again as I can use 
the space...

It did work for mga1 (as there were no prebuilt proprietary drivers then)

> That is totally inconsistent.
>
> Other distros either use proprietary drivers or free drivers with the
> needed firmwares.
> We do the first (live-cd) and the worst of all choices: free drivers
> w/o the needed firmwares (install ISO)
>
>>> 2) this is unlike the live-cd where we've those firmwares (and
>>>      the proprietary drivers as well)
>>>
>>
>> This is because you cant install rpms on live media...
>> (or you can, but as the change is gone with a reboot,
>>   there is not much point)
>
> Yet it is inconsistent.
>
>>> 3) This is unlike other "pure" FOSS distro such as Fedora
>>>       which includes the firmwares.
>>
>>
>>
>> Well, that's their choice, not ours...
>
> Offering the choice between working proprietary drivers
> and NOT working free drivers is somewhat stupid don't you think?
>

So we need to fix the hw/driver detection/switching and not just
"paper over" it by pulling nonfree stuff by default

>
>>> 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.
>>
>>
>>
>> But not from our perspective about free-only.
>
> Then why do you promote proprietary drivers on live cds :-) ?
> Again this is totally inconsistent...
>

So I guess we need to fix livecds by either dropping proprietary
stuff, or make the display_driver_helper ask if user wants to
boot with proprietary stuff or not...


> And nobody will ever wrote an alternative firmware anyway...
> And in most cases, nobody knows how the internal works.
> And for the AMD/ATI case, the free driver won't pick directly at the
> hardware but will use AtomBIOS to level differences between
> hw (remember the radeonhd fiasco).
>
> Who will rewrite the AMD firmwares for all radeon generations
> and/or make the driver work without Atom BIOS ??
> Come on...
>
> What we're actually promoting to our end users is that free drivers
> suck whereas the live cds with  proprietary drivers works smoothly.
>

Again, this is hw specific.

There is Intel, nouveau, sis,... that does not need fw/proprietary drivers.


> That's a total aberration regarding promoting FOSS

Well, it's also a simple truth/fact.
Not all hw is fully FOSS supported.

>
>>> 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)
>>>
>>
>> As pointed out in earlier discussions about this issue...
>>
>> There is 2 points needing fix.
>>
>> - the installer should detect the need for nonfree, and ask if people
>>   want to enable it. (or simply ask if user want to add nonfree media)
>
> I'm actually planning to add a media screen in cauldron installer so that
> one can enable/disable media.
>

Great.

> But that needs to actually include a nonfree/release subset on the install
> ISO so that those w/o network can enable it.
>

Or ask for additional media pointed out below.

> Detecting need for non-free could then be done (looking at modinfo
> output for needed modules)
>
>> - the other thing to fix is to change the installer option about
>>   "additional CD" to "additional media" and allow for browsing for
>>   additional rpms on a cd/dvd/disk/usb/... media.

--
Thomas


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