They really shouldn’t waste their limited, mostly community funded resources on this though. How many people use straight Debian on a laptop, and why?
The packages are older, it’s more stability oriented anyway.
I have run Debian on every PC and Laptop I have owned since c2000 and my wife's since c2005. Most recently a Lenovo P1 Gen 4. It is the best OS choice for me.
Yes I have to install with the non-free installer and had to install with wired Ethernet.
> The packages are older, it’s more stability oriented anyway.
Admittedly, I am running Debian Sid.
But after awhile, I gravitate back to Debian. I like the stability. I like the quiet in terms of updates, even with Debian's strong security model.
Debian is my home distro. I know it.
I might have said the same thing about Ubuntu, but I haven't run it in years. I'm glad it's there, but Debian's release cadence and the philosophy behind the Stable/Testing/Sid cascade is something that works for me.
I can't tell you how common people like me are though.
It's not perfect - subjectively and objectively there are things which could be improved, but I feel like the core values of Debian fulfill the needs of a common type of laptop user, me being one of them. I think that the organization is well equipped to not disappoint my trust.
How is adding the firmware for the common chips to the installation media 'wasting their limited, mostly community funded resources' ? The packages are already there in the non-free branch they just need to add it to the installation packages. Plus a lot of testing and sanity checks but it is not like they need to recode the entire system which is what you seem to be making it out to be.
The firmware packages are stable and work great. All this is doing is including them in the initial setup itself rather than asking folks to download and install manually.