On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 12:22:15 -0400
Neal Gompa <ngompa@fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 2, 2025 at 12:06 PM Juerg Haefliger
> <juerg.haefliger@canonical.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > linux-firmware is ever growing and I'd like to entertain the thought of
> > splitting it up. Not as fine grained as Debian but only split out the bigger
> > GPU blobs (for now):
> >
> > - linux-firmware (provides the bulk of the blobs)
> > - linux-<vendor>-graphics (similar to Debian, provides vendor specific
> > graphics related firmwares)
> >
> > This obviously can't break users so I'm trying to understand which pieces
> > need to be updated for seamless release upgrades and new installations. I
> > think this means that we need to detect what's in the system and install the
> > relevant linux-<vendor>-graphics package(s). Is this ubuntu-release-upgrader?
> > subiquity? ubuntu-drivers? All of them? Anything else?
> >
> > Image generation and seeds would probably be affected by this as well.
> >
> > Does anyone see any (other) issues with this?
> >
>
> I think it's a good idea, but from my experience, you'll probably want
> a metapackage that pulls everything in so install media and live media
> can include them.
Agreed. I think we already settled on the idea of linux-firmware being a
metapackage that installs everything so there would be no change from current
behavior.
However, it would not hurt to remove firmware that is used only on other
architectures just to shrink the media size. And maybe other non-essential
firmwares (whatever the definition of non-essential is in this context) but
that might not be worth the trouble.
...Juerg
>
> That *might* negate some of the benefits, depending on how you look at it.
>
>
>
