On Sat, Dec 06, 2014 at 08:51:10PM +0000, Roger Leigh wrote:
>Dropping contrib and non-free would immediately consign Devuan to
>irrelevance. Non-free firmware is needed for too much hardware.

Indeed. You can’t get a server NIC like Broadcom, which is part of your
Dell blade server, working without the firmware package. So the Debian
installer will give you no network.

Interestingly the kernel source will provide you with this firmware. If
you get the kernel source and compile your own kernel you will have the
necessary firmware on your system.

This leads to the question if firmware should be in non-free. And this is
important if you see that the Suse Server (for example) doesn’t have
a problem providing you with firmware.

>Actual need for non-free *programs* is limited today; ironically

That is true.

Shade and sweet water!

    Stephan

--

| Stephan Seitz          E-Mail: stse@??? |
| Public Keys: http://fsing.rootsland.net/~stse/keys.html |