On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 10:50:19PM +0500, Andrey Rahmatullin wrote: > On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 09:27:28AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote: > > The installer with non-free firmware built in would, I think, be better. > > I know it exists, but last time I wasn't able to use it because I needed a > > testing installer, not a stable installer, for some hardware reason, and I > > couldn't find the non-free testing installer for some reason. (This was > > probably my failing.) > No, this is explicitly failing of the Debian websites, specifically their > parts covering the ISOs. > Looks like the only sane way to get the ISOs is to remember the domain > that you used previously and so open https://cdimage.debian.org/ directly > (which of course redirects to https://www.debian.org/CD/), then navigate > to https://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/, then choose between stable and > testing, to get either to https://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/#stable and > then to https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/ or to > https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/ and then manually to > https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/amd64/iso-cd/. There you > are supposed to read the opening text and find the usable ISO pointer in a > statement "For convenience for some users, there is an alternative > unofficial netinst CD build which includes non-free firmware for extra > support for some awkward hardware." (I think I won't provide any public > comments on the content of this statement).
That's the trail of breadcrumbs: * I'm not sure _even if_ you put the non-free installer up on the front page, that it would solve wifi problems for all values of wifi firmware * I'm not sure that we can solve the video firmware problems by incorporating all firmware for all possible chipsets on CD media - and I'm not sure that you can meaningfully know ahead of time exactly which of several you'll need. If you need to find one set of firmware, then it's all in one place in non-free > I'm not sure how to find the stable firmware ISO easier than the testing > one (or easier than the way described above), as from > https://www.debian.org/, if you know where to click, you can get in 3 > clicks to https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst which lists direct ISO > links. Maybe it was possible on the old design though (but I suspect not). > > > I'm sure that much of this is my personal problem, but I can say that even > > a person who is quite familiar with Debian and has installed a lot of > > Debian systems struggles with the current set of options and has a hard > > time finding a path that works. > I'm sure that nothing of this is a failure of anyone or anything other > than the pages listed above. Point about difficulty of instructions for putting firmware onto USB noted. Maybe that's something that can be improved on the website itself fairly readily. All best, Andy C > > > -- > WBR, wRAR
