this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Debian? Please explain.
Maybe they're talking about including non-free firmware by default
How is that a mess?
It's impossible to disable it (at least from the GUI). Even Ubuntu allows it. It's a terrible change imo. Just add a toggle and make it checked by default
The current method is to set a boot parameter to opt out of non-free firmware, it's documented in the installer manual.
It should be in the installer itself imo
I bet they considered the options. It could simply be that no one has had time to change the installer. It could also be that the people who care about free software to the degree that they want to avoid non-free firmware usually figure out how to do it, and that too many options confuse new users. I don't know. A feature request discussion in the appropriate mailing list could be a good idea if you want change.
Wtf, why on earth would they do that? Thanks for pointing it out
Most newbies would have a hard time and most experienced people would grab the "unofficial" non-free image for installing just in case and then disable non-free if it wasn't needed.
I've not verified this, but does the installer actually install the non-free firmware if it's not needed?
New users found it hard to download the right installer if they needed non-free firmware. Experienced users know they can add firmware=never in the installer to disable firmware lookup if they want. If they want to decide on a firmware by firmware basis, that's an option too. If the hardware doesn't need non-free firmware it's not installed.
Enshittification
I know “Enshittification” is the Lemmy word of the year but you can’t just call everything you don’t like enshittification.
This clearly isn’t it.
Well probably idk. It's at least laziness of devs that decided not to add an opt-out toggle. But that's already enshittification to some degree
I get not being a fan but no toggle switch. But in this case it literally isn’t “enshittification”. Is it anti choice? Yes. Is it enshittification? No. Enshittification does not just mean “thing I don’t like”.
Here is a quote that describes what enshittification is:
More info can be found here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
I guess I used a different meaning then. I meant "product's loss of quality for no justified reason"
Fair. But in that case best use a more appropriate word.
I wish I could. My English knowledge is still not perfect unfortunately
It’s ok. I would go with “user hostile” in this case.
Not having an opt-out toggle pisses me off
Well, there is actually. You just have to be knowledgable enough to use it. What I am unclear on is why so many die hard “no non-free firmware” advocates have hardware that requires non-free firmware.
I am assuming the problem is that people have hardware that will cause non-free firmware to be downloaded and installed against their wishes. Because, if they do not own such hardware, no non-free firmware will be installed and therefore I do not see a problem. Unless of course what bothers people is that others are able to easily install a working system. I would not want to accuse anybody of such bad behaviour.
Insisting on worse experiences on others to further your own politics is not politics I personally support.
You know what probably pisses other people off? Finally deciding to install Debian and then finding that it does not run on their hardware.
Not having an opt-out toggle should definitely be a cause of concern. Not everyone is running Debian just for the FOSS-only firmware, but there's definitely a sizeable number of people doing so. Letting the user choose whether they want to install proprietary firmware or not is absolutely an important choice.
This is assuming there really isn't an opt-out somewhere in the install menu.
Edit: it may be that I am running something without FOSS drivers for it. I happened to forget about it. So what? I'd rather it not run (unless it's critical), and I definitely want to be prompted that a proprietary driver is recommended to run the specific device because no FOSS driver is available. Not doing so is taking away my choice in the matter, and if Debian is really doing that, then I will personally have to rethink my options, including my donations