Hi James,
> so the regression:
>
> * IS NOT that non-free firmware becomes unavailable when UEFI
> file transposition is used to create bootable drives
> -- because that firmware was not available previously
>
> * IS that bootable drives created using UEFI file transposition
> from affected systems no longer retain the complete intended
> Debian installation environment
>
> Is that interpretation fair? And are the resulting bootable
> drives created using the UEFI file transposition method completely
> unusable, or are they degraded-but-functional? (this could help to
> inform the severity of this bug)
Presented this way I will agree with the "degraded-but-functional".
It should also be noted that some utilities (Rufus prior to version
3.22) create 0-sized files for the symbolic links in order to alert the
user to their presence. But this means that users may be trying to load
a firmware from these zero-sized .deb packages, get an error and give up
instead of just picking the file from an external source on account that
it is not present. Rufus 3.22 will actually fix this issue, by
duplicating the symbolically linked content, but of course, this does
not address the problem for folks who want to use native OS utilities.
Regards,
/Pete
