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

[Thierry Vignaud]

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

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... :-)

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 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...

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.

That's a total aberration regarding promoting FOSS

>> 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.

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

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.