kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide

Matt Domsch Matt_Domsch at dell.com
Sun Mar 23 03:21:13 UTC 2008


On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 10:46:47PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've stripped non-Free firmware bits from Fedora kernels for F8 and
> rawhide, starting from tools developed by the gNewSense folks and now
> in use by BLAG developers, and built alternate kernels that I've
> successfully booted up and used on my x86_64 notebook.
> 
> You'd be surprised at how little it takes to get to a Free Software
> kernel.  It's just a few drivers that need firmware removed.

Do you have a list of such that you've removed, so we don't need to
download the kernel and do the diff?

I can understand moving firmware loading to userspace a lot of the
time, especially when it means you can keep from putting big hunks of
hex blobs into the kernel tree, for which diffs are meaningless.  Some
kernel subsystems have moved strongly in this direction, others less
so, mainly at the upstream subsystem maintainer's discretion.

I don't know that we need another kernel in Fedora to accomplish this
though.  We've been actively reducing the number of kernel variants,
which is good for QA and reduces end user confusion too.

Fedora allows non-free firmware, as long as it doesn't run on the host
CPU.

-- 
Matt Domsch
Linux Technology Strategist, Dell Office of the CTO
linux.dell.com & www.dell.com/linux




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list