[stonogo]

OpenBSD will download your wifi firmware during first boot (post-install) if there is a configured internet connection (i.e. ethernet).

[flukus]

Is there an easy to use alternative? Less and less laptops are coming with ethernet ports.

[microcolonel]

A lot of Linux distros just ship a lot of this firmware, not expecting to be litigated against for it; and it seems to work out.

[petecox]

c.f. Debian, which has a policy to exclude non-free firmware from its installation media.

The onus is on the user to themselves supply the firmware.

https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s04.html.en

[sogubsys]

You're correct. My complaint was about installation time.

I thought there was an instance where I saw all the access points somehow during the installer, but unsure how I did that... and I couldn't replicate it.

I suspected that I had wired ethernet configured, and then the installer downloaded firmware to configure wireless? It was just a guess, I didn't look more into it.