> Alternatively, you can compare the size (in bytes) of the > binaries. On my 64 bit Trisquel 5.5 system: > $ sudo wc -c /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-24-generic > 4670416 /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-24-generic
It's more common to have them in /lib/modules/*/firmware or something similar. Another way: compare tarball sizes. For 3.5.4 bzip2 compressed tarballs it's 80980207 and 78569526 bytes, so about three percent difference. Binaries and sources have different compressibility and maybe Linux-libre adds some text, so it's not a good comparison. > I guess the difference is very small. Anyway, you do not need many > directives to implement something nasty (a backdoor, a spyware, > etc.). You want the freedom to fix bugs in those blobs too (what is > close to impossible because they are blobs). That is why, if you value > your own freedom, you would refuse any proprietary piece of software. Some examples of their size: Radeon firmware uses about 15 KiB to emulate old 2d requests (only in R6xx, R7xx doesn't have it, drivers don't use it for R6xx); "Intel 2400 Wireless WiMAX Connection over USB" has a ~1.5 MiB firmware file. It might be possible to fit spyware in such files and there certainly are smaller programs difficult to debug with source.
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