TechBytes Episode 86: Debian GNU/Linux and Firmware

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2013-07-24 10:06:40 UTC
Modified: 2013-07-24 10:07:30 UTC

Richard Stallman in nature
Direct download as Ogg (00:06:42, 3.5 MB)

Summary: Richard Stallman's suggestion for people who want to compromise on the issue of firmware

THE latest Debian GNU/Linux, like the previous version (6.x), comes without notorious firmware by default, which causes inconvenience to some, yours truly included. I discussed this with Stallman and here are his views on the matter. ⬆

As embedded (HTML5):

Keywords: gnu fsf richardstallman

Download:

Recent Techrights' Posts

Debian losses in Switzerland hidden until after DPL election debate: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
How to Dehumanise a Triple National: Don't be easily incited against those who sacrifice a lot to inform the public of suppressed topics
IBM CEO Says IBM Won't be Bankrupt by 2028 or 2029 (When He Reaches Retirement Age): IBM has no path to survival
Big Announcement Tomorrow: Stay tuned...
GNU/Linux Seen Exceeding 10% in Antigua and Barbuda: In Antigua And Barbuda, what's seen this month is not far from the average
Gemini Links 05/08/2026: Family Room, Smoke, and Alarm clocks: Links for the day
The Establishment, Oxford, Google & Debian artificial intelligence conspiracies: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
SLAPP Censorship - Part 140 Out of 200: You Become What You Eat, Your Clients Become You: In 2024 Brett Wilson LLP failed to heed a decade-old warning
Links 05/08/2026: Microsoft's (XBox's) "Devastating July" and "Never Write With" Slop, Says New York Times: Links for the day
Gemini Links 05/08/2026: No to Slop, Dangers of Clown Computing, and Reducing Internet Usage: Links for the day
analytics.usa.gov Says 7% of Sessions Come From GNU/Linux and ChromeOS. If ~40% (Mobile) Get Omitted, It's More Like 11%.: In desktops and in laptops GNU/Linux has become a big player
The Register MS Takes Money From NVIDIA and HP to Promote Their Ponzi Scheme, "AI", in a Fake 'Article' That Says "AI" 42 Times: "The media"... selling us scams for profit
Fertility app privacy, Britain's teenage pregnancies & faith based schooling: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
In Chile, GNU/Linux Approaches 4%: Let's see if it can exceed 5% by year's end
No Room for Misogyny and Incels in Free Software: How can we ever trust men whose own family and their own partners cannot trust?
In El Salvador, ChromeOS and GNU/Linux Now Measured at Around 12%: signs of gradual and steady adoption of GNU/Linux
Software in the Public Interest (SPI) Starts Spending Big Money in an Effort to Resist Lawsuit From Daniel Pocock: They've lost over half a million dollars in the latest 3 years
The Establishment, Cambridge, Steve McIntyre & Debian suicide cluster: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 05/08/2026: Internet Archive Harmed by Slop Bot, "EBay And Former Execs Agree to Pay $56 Million For Trying to ‘Crush’ a Journalist": Links for the day
Luxembourg and Software Freedom: Luxembourg's adoption of GNU/Linux has quite consistently been higher than the European average
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Web Site is Online, GNU's Site Having Issues (Ongoing Issues): We hope they can rectify the issues with the GNU Web site
Freedom Includes the Liberty to Disagree (and be Listened to, Not Censored): Freedom is our collective strength
Tanzania: GNU/Linux Now Seen on 8% on Desktops/Laptops (User Clients): numbers have more than doubled
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 04, 2026: IRC logs for Tuesday, August 04, 2026
Gemini Links 05/08/2026: Being Good, Tildeverse and Tilde.pink, Games: Links for the day
Links 04/08/2026: GAFAM Expressing Concerns About Dangerous Disinformation by Slop, Bill Epsteingate-Connected Litigation Firm Salivating Over Europe: Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/08/2026: Root Shell and "Duty of Care": Links for the day
Alternate Data (Not IBM's Headcount) to Show Mass Layoffs' Effect at IBM (Despite Many Acquired Workers Via M&A): mass layoffs at Hashicorp and at Confluent this year (media did not cover either).
Big Blue's Quiet Axe - Poem Regarding IBM "RAs": No idea who posted this, but it is profound
Growing Proportion of Linux Commits Being Made by LLMs Not a Sign of LLMs Working, It's a Sign of Linux Development Being Shifted From Community to GAFAM and Other Slop Pushers: antagonist became apologist
Worse Than "Taking Your Job", the Slop Pyramid Scheme Will "Take Your Pension": This will not end well
Abundance of Fake (Sometimes Paid-for) 'News' About IBM Will Discredit the Media as a Whole: In 'the news' today
Microsoft is Trying Vapourware Again (to Keep Developers and Gamers From Fleeing): For XBox, the main thing over the horizon is additional layoffs
statCounter Reckons 12.33% of Web Traffic in Gambia Can be Attributed to GNU/Linux, Even 15% If Adding ChromeOS: Will this be sustainable?
Reminder: The Pedophilia Problem Comes From the Accusers: Attacks on Richard Stallman are a distraction; his accusers are themselves the culprits
SLAPP Censorship - Part 139 Out of 200: Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Needs More Public Scrutiny (New Management Changed Nothing, It's Costing a Lot of Taxpayers' Money): millions or maybe billions of pounds wasted
Rumours of Further IBM Shutdowns: IBM is going out of existence
Brigading Against Women - Part II - Threatening Women Using the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) and Then False Threats Miscarrying the Name of a Court: In this series we intend to show the threats, the outcomes of those threats, the response to those threats
Collapse of MElon Companies a Taste of What's to Come for Slop Bubble and GAFAM (Trillions in Debt, Justified as Slop "Investments"): One good example of this was SpaceX
The 'Hyperinflation' in Hardware Dooms Video Hosting (Very Large Files): a terabyte of video files would be expensive
Rumours of Silent Layoffs in Microsoft This Month (August 2026), PIPs and Global Voluntary Separation Agreement (GVSA), aka "Buyouts": Will any investigative journalism follow or just shallow puff pieces and LLM trash from slopfarms?
Links 04/08/2026: "Framework for Musician Burnout" and Alexa+ "is a Buggy Embarrassment": Links for the day
Signs That XBox as a Console is Coming to an End, Windows Gaming Will be Called "XBox": "XBox" is the next "Surface"
Microsoft's Share in Search Falls Sharply in Europe: The layoffs at Microsoft's Bing will carry on
Romania: GNU/Linux Reaches 4% (Less Than EU Average): We expect this same upward trend to carry on
Microsoft Sites or Sites Sponsored by Microsoft Angry That GNU/Linux is Gaining: The Microsofters cannot easily dismiss reports of GNU/Linux growth as "bots" or just allege that statCounter alone is wrong
Ableism in the Free Software Movement Typically Comes From GAFAM Operatives and Proprietary Software Apologists: And their hired guns
Afghanistan: GNU/Linux Steadily Rises to 9%: Windows is steadily declining
IBM Innovation: It Has Invented New Methods of Silent Layoffs or Secret RAs: How IBM disguises mass layoffs now
Many Anniversaries: Many anniversaries in quick succession
LLM Slop Won't Replace People and Jobs (in the Long Run): At the end of the day, people who know their job offer more useful information, whereas LLMs waste people's time (typically an 'externality' to the entity deploying chatbots)
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 03, 2026: IRC logs for Monday, August 03, 2026
Over 3,500 Known Gemini Capsules Accessible and Active According to Lupa: It finally happened this morning
Gemini Links 04/08/2026: Library Cards, Dead Ends in Software Development, and DOS on USB Key: Links for the day
IBM Has Embraced and Rewarded Liars: The IBM culture vanished
statCounter Estimates GNU/Linux at 5.32% in Kuwait, Years Ago It Was Near 0%: Kuwait rose to fame in the 1990s because of a war
Swatting People Who Write About Corruption, Misogyny, Criminal Misuse of Funds: we've given ourselves a decade to cover all those stories
GNU/Linux Rises Above 6% in Colombia: In Colombia, which is a large south American country, GNU/Linux has risen steadily in recent years
SLAPP Censorship - Part 138 Out of 200: Garrett Has Basically "Lost" and It is "Embarrassing" to Them: they just wound up costing hundreds of thousands of pounds
Gemini Links 03/08/2026: Great Exodus, xkcd as Text, and Dead Ends: Links for the day
GNU/Linux Has Surged to 6.3% in Madagascar: Madagascar's adoption of Free software is a subject we covered a lot in past years
Microsoft's Slop Bet is Killing the XBox Even Faster: LLMs destroy almost anything they touch
The Cyber Show on "Weaponised Antisocial Technology": by Andy
Alexandre Oliva on Slippery Slop (LLMs): By Alexandre Oliva
RMS Won the Argument and Now GNU Wins Over Computer Users: He can look back at nearly 43 years of GNU and say, "I was right..."
statCounter Corrects GNU/Linux Estimates, Now Measured at 9% Worldwide: Windows has sunk like a rock
GNU/Linux-Centric Blogs Belatedly Pick Up News About GNU/Linux Gains: 4-8% Depending on the Surveyor: more people will get curious and give it a go
Links 03/08/2026: Strike By Flight Attendants (WestJet) and Greedflation: Links for the day
Links 03/08/2026: EU Curtailed Slop, Frank Zappa Recalled: Links for the day
Daniel Pocock on Sky News This Morning: No harm done
Morten Linderud Has Helped Microsoft Put Locks (and Kill Switches) on the PCs of Arch Linux Users: "the first rule of "secure boot" is to disable "secure boot"
In Poor Peru, GNU/Linux Surges From 1% to 5% in a Few Years: Windows is dying
All Social Control Media is a Weapon (Against Its Users, Serving the Real Owners): That social control networks are weaponised isn't a new concept
Fanning the Flames of Journalism: This week we have several surprises coming
Forcing the Slop Bubble to Implode Fully to Save the Economy From an Even Greater Collapse and Societal Harm: Let's blow up the bubble. The sooner, the better
GNU/Linux at 8% in Croatia: somewhat of a GNU/Linux adoption hotbed
It's Easy to Predict Microsoft Layoffs for October 2026 Because of the Financial 'Results' That Month (More Faking, More Secret Debt and Buzzwords to Perfume This Debt as "Investment"): From what we've read, Microsoft is silently laying off people this month based on LITE, which leads to PIPs
Not Hard to Guess Who Will Pay for IBM's Collapse (Due to False Statements Made to Shareholders), Red Hat May Disappear: IBM's leadership is never being punished for its failures
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 02, 2026: IRC logs for Sunday, August 02, 2026
Gemini Links 03/08/2026: Collectibles, Cities of the Red Night, and Lali Lambda: Links for the day