this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Debian is all free software if you just use the main repo and avoid non-free and non-free-firmware.
You can't install it easily without some non-free software. When you download the iso it is precontaminated. You can add a special boot flag to turn off non-free firmware but that's rather obscure.
I'm not against a non-free iso, I just want to have the option for both.
They used to omit non-free-firmware from the installation. They changed it with Debian bookworm when they split the firmware out of non-free, since unfortunately a LOT of hardware requires non-free firmware of some sort. There's also things like CPU microcode in there, which practically everyone needs to ensure CPU vulnerabilities are patched.