Perhaps manufacturers who only distribute firmware binaries could
provide the kernel operating groups urls to put into the "make config".
That way when I or someone else goes to build or install an initial
kernel, you do not get a "kiddie-wumpus" kernel installation with
drivers that do not work.
For example, I use the prism54 chipset in my wireless card and it
requires a firmware file to activate.
Very simple solution, with the only drawback that you need a network
connection at kernel build time to do the initial install of the driver.
Subsequent new kernel builds can then optionally check for firmware updates.
This way, the only thing the binary only manufacturers have to do is
publish ftp/http locations for firmware files.
Since many of them cannot be bothered to do much else, it might actually
work.
-gc
Rodd Clarkson wrote:
On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 09:49 -0500, Alan Cox wrote:
On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 10:25:50AM +1100, Rodd Clarkson wrote:
I'm a little confused. Are you talking about this thread as 'our
original discussions' or has then been discussed elsewhere and you are
referring to these other threads. If so, could you supply some pointers
to where?
Long ago before Fedora existed a bunch of Red Hat folks sat down and drafted
a set of proposals for "What is Fedora", "Why is Fedora good", etc. One of the
things we wanted was a free software distro buildable with free software.
I went through that discussion archive and although we discussed issues like
extras dependancies on non-core for example we never discussed firmware at all.
The extension of the current policy onto firmware files is not a planned and
thought out event, its just happened.
Now I happen to think it is right to keep firmware seperate but thats not a
debate we had when founding Fedora
Alan,
Thanks for the insight.
Maybe it's time that this discussion/debatee was had. Given the trend
toward storing firmware elsewhere that the actual hardware, this needs
to be resolved (one way or the other).
Rodd