martin rumori <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 05:06:53PM +0200, ChristianH wrote: >> Why is it so important to load the firmware? >> >> Do they put in an extra light firmware at the factory, in order to keep >> shipping weights low? <gr> > > to keep shipping weights rather low, they put in NO firmware in some > hardware (just a loader). firmware is included with the driver and > required to be uploaded to the device on every initialization or at > least after every power on.
Which can be very problematic, as some people do take it *very* serious with free software and refuse to include firmware which is not under GPL or a similar free licence in their distribution... In my case it was the firmware of a RME Hammerfall card which (some) Debian people do not want to distribute... The case made me switch from AGNULA/DeMuDi to Planet CCRMA (Which are both excellent audio distributions BTW) Robert Epprecht
