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Comment by josephcsible | Hacker News Reader

I'm usually on the FSF's side about everything, but this is one place where I disagree with them and agree with this article. A free OS with free firmware is definitely better than a free OS with proprietary firmware, but both of those are way better than a proprietary OS with proprietary firmware. By making the middle ground difficult, a lot of users have to choose between ideological purity and working hardware, and almost all of them will choose the latter in a big net loss for freedom. (E.g., "What do you mean this Linux thing doesn't support my network card unless I jump through all these hoops? I'll stick with Windows, where it just works out of the box.")

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> A free OS with free firmware is definitely better than a free OS with proprietary firmware, but both of those are way better than a proprietary OS with proprietary firmware

How about all three? We have plenty of very good "open with proprietary firmware" distros, many very similar to debian (Ubuntu, PopOS, Mint, Manjaro...), but not that many good "fully open" ones. That is the whole point of distros. If we dilute Debian's fully open philosophy, we don't really gain anything in middle category, but lose one of the few remaining good fully open distros.

To fix your example: "Oh, you say this Debian thing doesn't support my network card? I see why everyone recommended that Pop thing instead, I'll use that then."

Debian is not a friendly distro for users who don't know what they're getting themselves into and that's fine. That's why nobody should (and nobody does) recommend it to Windows users looking for their first Linux distro.

I think part of the problem is identifying which of those alternatives is closest to "exactly Debian, but without the hardware support problems". You really want something which tracks closely enough that bug reports against packages in that distro could be directly and intentionally accepted by Debian's tracker.

The problem with accepting "Debian is not a friendly distro and that's fine" is that unlesss the snags are addressed, the number of reasons for people to run off to Pop and Ubuntu will only increase over time. Having a friendlier on-ramp to something that is actually Debian is good, but I suspect you could satisfy the "keep Debian pure" requirement with a fairly thin branding layer.

> I think part of the problem is identifying which of those alternatives is closest to "exactly Debian, but without the hardware support problems".

That sounds like Debian's non-free ISO.

Yes, but it needs a different name to create a clear space between Debian's comparative purity and the ideologically messy practicalities of actually getting the hardware working. Technically there's little challenge, the hard work on that part has been done.

In the end, it should distill down to:

"What is the likelihood of closed-firmware-blob hardware manufacturers changing their behavior because of Debian?"

"What is the likelihood of fewer people using Debian because their installer is more difficult?"

IMHO, the odds aren't good that ideological purity is going to have any net result on hardware manufacturers. So you're really just shooting yourself in the foot so you can feel painfully just.

That said, there are absolutely fights Debian can and should focus on, even if they're painful: ones where there's a chance of victory, and the rewards of victory balance with the risks of the attempt.

Why cant FSF groups just do what FANG do, and make it easy for users in the first place, then once you have them in your walled garden pull the ol' ideological switcharoo.

It goes against the whole point of user freedom, which is kind of like starting a nonviolent movement and then pointing guns at people if they refuse to join.

100% this. A decade ago I needed to replace some internal Linux file servers. I was keen to try ZFS, and so I tried BSD. Naturally on new hardware. Turns out BSD didn't support the on-board ether net. Tried a bunch of network cards from the cupboard, no support their either. Opportunity lost.

Switched to Windows server (and was blown away by how polished that was, but that's another story.)

I get the advantages of free software, I really do, but this sort of neglect of usefulness in the name of ideological purity does not win converts.

On the other hand who cares? Free Software does not need to grow, it fulfils a purpose for those who want to be ideological pure, and I accept that is a valuable thing. Chasing converts at the cost of purity may just end up being no-man's-land.

Perhaps what the author is looking for I'd a debian derivitive, not debian itself?

Debian itself provides the blobs for years, the post is mostly about making those CDs with blobs the default user experience for Debian itself, not for derivatives, some of which provide blobs by default.

> On the other hand who cares? Free Software does not need to grow

Sure, there's no VC breathing down the neck of Debian, but arguably the purpose of free software is to provide software freedom for users. If people aren't able to use that free software, it's a bit pointless. Further, a (small) fraction of users grow into developers creating more free software.

To the extent non-free firmware allows more people to use free software, I don't think it's clear at all that a puritan approach to firmware is a net win for software freedom.

The purpose is to provide free software _for those who want it_.

If the goal is to create converts then a puritanical approach is a poor approach, IMO.

Personally I've never seen the FSF approach as being "conversional" - rather it acts as a purity touchstone.

Debian needs to articulate its specific goals to the author, there are many paths they can take, but unless the goals are clearly articulated its hard to see what the right path is.

Note that some goals which we take for granted (everything should be free, get folk to switch) are not necessarily compatible. I think that is the root of this discussion.

I don't think Debian needs "converts". This isn't a religious revival movement. There are many Debian derivatives that aren't as arsey as Debian about non-free blobs; if that's what people want, then they should "convert" to one of those derivatives, rather than raw Debian.

One could just as well claim that if Debian decides to include non-free firmware on the official install images, those that are deeply offended about that can sod off and create some derivative distro with the dirty bits removed. It's not written in stone that Debian has to be the purest distro of them all.

> It's not written in stone that Debian has to be the purest distro of them all.

Perhaps not purest, and perhaps not in stone, but in the closest thing to a digital equivalent it's at least written that Debian has to be pure.

The very first bullet of Debian's Social contract is: "Debian will remain 100% free". You could argue that when that changes, it stops being Debian.

https://www.debian.org/social_contract

Well, Debian the OS, yes. But where do you draw the line? Debian still allows your web browser to execute non-free Javascript that you download from some shady site on the internet. ;)

Anyway, for FW one can certainly argue it's not part of the OS, as it's executing in some auxiliary core on the device rather than being part of the OS itself executing on the main CPU's. And further, if that same non-free FW would be stored in ROM or on flash, Debian has no problems with it as long as open source drivers are present in the kernel. So the only problem here is devices that want the driver to provide the FW blob to them upon initialization instead of the FW blob being persistently stored on the device. Not really any meaningful difference from a software freedom perspective either way.

> Switched to Windows server (and was blown away by how polished that was, but that's another story.)

Have you told this story anywhere else already? I'd love to read it. In a past life I worked very close to Windows Server, but I mostly selfhost Linux at home now.

What is it mostly identity related? I miss AD sometimes...or maybe storage? The SMB stack is pretty good too.

I haven't. I had set up the machine with 2 large spindle drives, 2 large SSDs, and a separate SSD for the OS.

after booting windows looked at the disk layout and asked me what I planned to do. It suggested some quick options, one of which was exactly what I planned to do (raid the spindle pair, and raid the SSD pair) and one even better (create a volume putting the SSD and spindle together, and then raid that.)

Yes thanks I said, and it did everything. By contrast setting up raid on the previous Linux box, albeit 5 years earlier) took days of searching for docs, specific magic incantations on the command line, and lots of rebooting.

So yes, I get the freedom thing, but sometimes a computer is just a tool, and I want it to just work.

If I recall correctly Fedora in the 2003 - 2006 era included an option to set up raid as part of the standard installer. Around the same time frame gnomes disk tool supported actually doing operations like replacing a disk in that array.

Even the incantation to do it manually isn't that magic. I'm guessing you could read the manual for the options to mdadm --create in minuted rather than days. If you want to be really fancy zpool create mirror foo mirror bar.

> who cares? Free Software does not need to grow, it fulfills a purpose for those who want to be ideological pure,

The point is to turn the tables in software. Free Software needs to grow and expand until it makes sense to say:

> who cares? Proprietary software does not need to grow, it fulfills a purpose for those who want to be ideological pure as propertarian/capitalist

and the question is whether to completely ignore anything involving non-free software or not.

Your sentiment is the exact premise behind https://github.com/fiendish/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs

(You can tell from the blurbs on the readme and download page).

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