On Wed, 2017-05-03 at 16:55 +0800, Paul Wise wrote: > On Tue, 2017-05-02 at 23:29 +0530, Ritesh Raj Sarraf wrote: [...] > > Like most other Enterprise Linux Distributions, Debian too picks a > > particular kernel (stable- lts) and to some extent also backports > > fixes into it. That makes it a completely unique kernel, against > > which certification needs to be done. > > It is true that we use a unique version of Linux/kFreeBSD/Hurd but I > would advocate a different approach. There is a lot of hardware that > will never run mainline Linux and will never be able to be fully > supported by Debian. These systems should be able to be certified to > work with Debian [...]
No, they should not, otherwise this certification becomes meaningless. Basically any system using one of our supported architectures can run a 'Debian' system with some custom components added. But that system is unlikely to get prompt updates to fix kernel security bugs - or maybe any updates at all, depending on how the vendor (mis)configured APT. If the vendor (or their SoC supplier) chooses to fork and not to contribute back to Linux, they must accept the consequences, and we should not endorse that fork. Certification should mean that you can use the Debian installer or an official Debian image on the system. If it actually requires a custom installer or image created by the vendor, that is out of our control and ability to support. (I leave aside the question of whether 'Debian' would include the contrib and non-free sections. I think that realistically we would have to add a second tier of certification for the vast majority of systems that require installation of non-free firmware for important components like the GPU or network interface.) Ben. -- Ben Hutchings friends: People who know you well, but like you anyway.
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