this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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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