[RF_Savage]

You will not be able to modify the firmware blob just by running linux.

Few years back there was danger of FCC de facto banning alternative router firmwares like openwrt to prevent tampering with the wifi cards firmware.

This was the "only manufacturer signed firmware allowed" thing that thankfully was avoided.

FCC's motivation in this is to prevent people from using too much power or certain frequencies.

And as most manufacturers want to be able to sell in USA, it would have likely affected all versions. Kainda like how many wifi devices sold in Europe only go up to channel 11 on 2.4GHz, when the EU band goes up to channel 13. But ch12 and ch13 are not legal in usa, so they are blocked.

[throway453sde]

You mean there are binary blobs without source code in the linux repo?

[bobthebuilders]

Yup. One of the reasons GNU has a deblobbed Linux build.