Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by chungy 3089 days ago
Debian removes binary blobs from the kernel, putting them into separate microcode and firmware packages in non-free instead.

Intel places restrictions against reverse engineering the microcode, as well as it not being in the prefered original source. Both of these violate the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and thus it can only be in non-free at best.
1 comments
orblivion 3089 days ago
I thought you need the microcode to boot. How can you function in a non-free OS? And I guess non-free people will have these bugs now?

Also, I have basic Ubuntu. I'm running `apt list --installed` and I don't have the microcode package in the list. Does that command not list dependencies, or am I just missing it?

link
chungy 3088 days ago
The CPU has a built-in baseline microcode that it uses on every boot (runtime microcode updates are not persistent), OSes don't need to necessarily update it, but they can.
link