On Mon, 2 Jun 2025 19:43:01 +0200
Heinrich Schuchardt <heinrich.schuchardt@canonical.com> wrote:
> Juerg Haefliger <juerg.haefliger@canonical.com> schrieb am Mo., 2. Juni
> 2025, 18:05:
>
> > 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?
> >
> > Thanks
> > ...Juerg
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>
>
> >
> >
> >
> Swapping GPUs and other hardware typically is not synchronized with system
> installation or upgrades.
>
> My hope is that when moving the NVMe with my installed system from one
> computer to another it still boots into the graphical desktop and has WiFi
> and Ethernet.
>
> Please, consider hardware updates as one of the usage scenarios.
>
> Even if linux-firmware were split into multiple smaller binary packages for
> smaller updates, it might still make sense to install more than is strictly
> needed for the current hardware.
Sure. Users should be able to install them all, even if the current system
doesn't need all of them. I'm not sure yet how much smartness we want to put
into the installer and upgrader to figure out what to remove (if anything
at all). Maybe just default to keep everything and let the user uninstall
manually or prompt the user.
>
> Best regards
>
> Heinrich
Thanks for the feedback. It's much appreciated.
...Juerg
