One of Debian's draw backs is that simply finding the download page on its website is an arduous process.
Because despite the rapid dismissal from these other yahoos, finding an image with WiFi firmware from the front page is a nightmare maze of wrong links and secret knowledge.
Didn't know you could do that.
(I can't respond to you person responding to me, but I meant that I think cp being able to write a working image directly to a dev was not always true, and people always used dd for that before)
It works only for hybrid ISOs. Not every ISO supports this, although many do.
Search for "debian non-free iso" and you probably will find what you are looking for.
> ...nightmare maze of wrong links and secret knowledge.
Please, don't exaggerate.
The project is explicitly about free software, so you should not be able to walk in the door and casually/accidentally walk out with non-free software. But more importantly, it should be a fairly straightforward process to identify "how many non-free sources did I need to incorporate in order to make my piece of 2004 hardware boot and run acceptably?" vs "how many ... in 2019?"
One of the ideals of the Debian distro is also reproducibility, for reasons I won't go into since it's not particularly relevant, but for anyone who hasn't seen it before already: https://isdebianreproducibleyet.com/
The non-free parts will (potentially, depending on what kind of non-free I guess...) always keep this number under 100%
I love the Debian that Gotham Needs, I've never seen this, and the big red asterisk on "should" handles this concern neatly ;)
And the result is that 99.99% of people can't get 99.99% freedom because of 0.01% of people doubling down on the 0.01% of freedom. I love Debian, but I consider that gatekeeping a great crime against regular people who could be empowered and informed from minimal freedom to nearly total freedom instead of kept out by arcanity and hardlining.
That's why I like the link I posted. Because it says "this will actually work on your computer" AND also informs you about user freedom and the harm of proprietary device drivers.
> Please, don't exaggerate.
Let's perform an exercise, shall we? Starting from www.debian.org, reading from top left to bottom right as the English language is read, how many words must you pass over, how many links must you pass over, which links do you have to click, and how do you know to click those links and not the other ones in order to find an iso that installs on a market standard laptop over WiFi? The decision tree is much deeper than you acknowledge.
I guess you should start with the first link, the one that says "About Debian". There you can know what Debian is about and align your expectations.
If you think it works for you, then go back to www.debian.org and do a ctrl+f and type "download", there is a big button in the top right corner. It is probably what you need (amd64, netinstall).
I mean, I can (and do) manually apt-get the right firmware packages at some point, either popping a shell during install or after first boot, but it is definitely a maze of some kind, especially if you don't know what package contains the firmware you need.
I am a software developer who uses Linux exclusively since about 2000 and has contributed indirectly to Debian.
Last week I wanted to setup Debian on my new work laptop. Naively and without thinking much I downloaded the default image, so the wifi card didn't work.
I was on holiday, abroad with friends. Even with both the buster and testing non-free images the wifi card didn't work.
After three hours (downloading, installing a cd creator on a mac of a friend etc) I got frustrated, downloaded an Ubuntu image and it just worked.
You could also press / and type "download" and it's the first hit.
In fact, there is literally a small white rectangle with light green text that is difficult to read. The rectangle is only filled green if the user happens to mouse over it. Also the box floats well outside the center view of the page-- i.e., the user has to use time and energy to move their eye outside the main text flow to that area. Compare to the Ubuntu front page where the download link is in the flow of the main block of text.
Again, to be literal:
default: unobtrusive box with small text and an icon that has an arrow outlined in a gray-on-a-white-bg so light I can barely see it on my wide LCD screen.
mouseover: box becomes more prominent and text becomes readable
That's the opposite of the style you described.
> You could also press / and type "download" and it's the first hit.
It's funny because the design you are defending is one of the few that breaks the discoverability of Firefox's wonderful realtime search.
FF search is so helpful because a) the text gets highlighted in realtime as the user types and b) FF will jump to a scroll position that brings the current highlighted text into view. Because Debian's unobtrusive download box is outside the main text flow and at the top of the page, the user is unlikely to notice the realtime selection and they don't get the benefit of a scroll jump.
So yes, FF "/" is awesome, but Debian's website somehow finds the way to make it the least effective at revealing that download link to the user.
So, even if it is there it was invisible to me.
I wouldn't consider reading to be an arduous process.
All the destinations from that page will lead you to images that do not work over wifi on nearly any laptop.
The actual links for the images are small, without weight, in a place that nobody looks for.
What from that soup of letters is your computer's architecture?
The faq doesn't really answer this in a way that'd let your average user be certain they can install via wifi: