Re: [H-source-users] [PATCH 6/6] Add Guix system with GNU/Hurd to the distro list

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Sun, 26 Jun 2022 17:06:08 -0400
bill-auger <bill-auger@peers.community> wrote:

> On Sun, 26 Jun 2022 16:57:16 -0400 bill-auger wrote:
> 
> > if it could be presented like that, then the distro name is
> > actually irrelevant - that is my thinking  
> 
> just to drive that nail in further :)
> 
> a mint-linux user could install the trisquel kernel, or a manjaro
> user could install the parabola kernel (or someone could
> roll-their own LFS), yet h-client would be able to report
> perfectly correct information for "it works with free software" -
> that is why i suggested the Distro: "other/custom" option
That would be super risky to do. Userspace tools can load nonfree
firmwares.

For bluetooth there is the example of hciattach or patched versions of
hciattach and/or btuart that can load firmwares into bluetooth
dongles[1]. 

And Debian already has a package for some nonfree bluetooth firmware in
nonfree[2], and here I don't know the level of itegration for these
things, but the firmware loading could happen at boot after the user
installed the nonfree package.

In Parabola we also removed non-fsdg compliant firmwares for various
devices, and in all these cases they were to be loaded from userspace.
Though it was mostly for hardware not supported by h-node like SDR and
similar things.

So if users just install linux-libre on reguar distributions, we'd have
a risk of having massive bogus data because there isn't only the kenrel
involved in making the hardware work.

And there is also the many drivers in userspace (many printer drivers
are probably nonfree as well for instance).

If the idea was to enable more contributions from more diverse users, a
way to fix that could be to ship h-client on FSDG compliant
distributions installers. This way users could test easily without
having to install FSDG distributions.

It could also make users more tempted to try live versions of FSDG
compliant distributions: if it works they could want to install it, if
it doesn't they'd report it to h-node anyway and they wouldn't have
lost their time trying in vain (because trying takes time, you'd need to
download the image, write it to an usb key, find how to boot on it,
etc).

References:
-----------
[1]https://github.com/RPi-Distro/bluez-firmware/issues/3
[2]https://packages.debian.org/stretch/all/bluez-firmware

Denis.

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