Thanks for replying,
I see. Thanks for reminding me of this. However, it seems quite foolish (to me) to disqualify Firefox solely because you "could" install non-free addons. I think that if I were to simply look on each developer's website (which Mozilla makes very easy), I could easily find out whether or not it's FLOSS. I believe that it's important to support Firefox, since it's the only thing left from total Chromium takeover in the browser market. Stuff like this is why I won't use an FSF compliant distro -- they only look at what could be, not what can be. I find the rest of your tips to be liberating though, and I will be sure to use them in the future. Thanks, -[T] IMSOASIAN (Sorry for the long delay, switching to Debian has been giving me a migraine and a half.) On 7/6/22, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, 6 Jul 2022 07:11:50 -0400 > LUH LAH <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hello there, >> >> I am a general supporter of the Free Software movement. I try to do >> everything in my power to reflect this ideology. >> >> However, I have been informed about some troubling aspects of >> Linux-Libre. >> >> So, I will ask the following questions in hopes of having these >> worries squashed: >> >> >> 1.) Does Linux-Libre swap out proprietary blobs in the Linux kernel >> for fully free pieces of software, with no reliance on the hardware >> microcode? > Linux-libre makes sure not to redistribute non-free software and blocks > the loading of loadable non-free firmwares. > > The reality is that linux-libre by itself doesn't solve all the > problems, instead you need to combine it with other things to get them > solved. > > For instance if you install linux-libre on top of a non-FSDG compliant > distribution, you can still end up with non-free software in other > parts of the system. And with non-FSDG distributions, this is not a > bug. > > Even Debian that is 100% free software + linux-libre is not sufficient > to avoid non-free software inside the distribution because in Debian you > have software like Firefox that have (add-on) repositories that contains > non-free software, so you might accidentally install non-free software > without knowing it. > > And If you use an FSDG compliant distribution with non-free BIOS or > UEFI, linux-libre will run code from that BIOS/UEFI[1]. > > And if you use Libreboot with non-RYF compliant GPUs, Libreboot and > linux-libre will both run nonfree code provided by these GPUs. > > So if you really want to get rid of non-free software, a RYF compliant > laptop combined with an FSDG compliant distribution is a pretty good > solution for that. > > It's not perfect (for instance HDDs and SSDs have firmwares internally) > but compared to off the shelf laptops with a Management Engine or > equivalent, there is a huge difference. > > As for microcode updates, the security issues that comes with not > applying them only applies to situations where you can't trust the > software that is running on your computer. There is a good article > about that here[2]. > > So the solution (beside designing our own hardware) is to avoid running > software you can't trust. > > This means avoiding things like: > - Running JavaScript that comes from web pages that you don't trust. > - Running non-free software. > - Running virtual machines that you don't have control of or who are > controlled by people that you don't trust. > > References: > ----------- > [1]That code is passed to the kernel through ACPI tables and then run > by the kernel. > [2]https://jxself.org/afraid.shtml > > Denis. > _______________________________________________ linux-libre mailing list [email protected] http://www.fsfla.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-libre
