Right, and as I mention apt says firmware-linux-nonfree was manually
installed, but I don't recall installing it. It says it isn't a
dependency for anything else, so it wasn't installed as a dependency
when I installed something else. In addition to my not remembering
installing firmware-linux-nonfree, wouldn't it have required me to add
the non-free repository to have installed it in the first place?

Sorry if we're getting off track here but I honestly don't recall
installing anything nonfree on this machine.

On Thu, 2020-01-09 at 21:43 +0100, Antony Stone wrote:
> On Thursday 09 January 2020 at 21:40:16, 'smee via Dng wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 2020-01-09 at 21:29 +0100, Antony Stone wrote:
> > > On Thursday 09 January 2020 at 21:25:51, 'smee via Dng wrote:
> > > > "i firmware-linux-nonfree Depends firmware-misc-nonfree (=
> > > > 20161130-3)"
> > >
> > > No, that's not itself :) Thats' "firmware-LINUX-nonfree" :)
> >
> > aah I see. apt shows firmware-linux-nonfree was manually installed,
> > I
> > don't recall ever installing it, in fact I thought I had
> > successfully
> > avoided installing anything nonfree in devuan on this machine. So I
> > thought it must be a dependency itself, but aptitude why shows no
> > dependencies.
>
> "i firmware-linux-nonfree Depends firmware-misc-nonfree" means that
> firmware-
> linux-nonfree is installed, and depends on firmware-misc-nonfree,
> which is
> therefore the reason why firmware-misc-nonfree is itself installed.
>
> It reduces the question instead to "why is firmware-linux-nonfree
> installed?"
>
>
> Antony.
>