Re: [H-source-users] Shall we remove debian from h-node?

[bill-auger]

ok, so this is a summary, now that denian 12 is released and we have seen it's
form - it is most likely that all newly installed debian systems would be highly
prone to false-positives - most hardware will "just work" and there is no easy
way for the user to know if it works only because of non-free firmware - the
short answer is "yes"; but we have suspected and later known that for some time
already - since this was last discussed, RMS has also concurred that debian 12
should not be an option for h-node

though it is still possible to install and maintain a libre debian system, it
is not obvious how to do it - it appears that all debian ISOs now include all
non-free firmwares in the debian repos, and the primary installer (the
calamares GUI installer) installs all non-free firmwares onto the the user's
system without mentioning that it is doing so, nor offering a way to opt out,
even if the computer has no hardware which would make use of any of them 

though probably not mentioned previously, for completeness, debian testing and
unstable also need to be deactivated for the same reason - they surely have
existing entries associated with them; so they probably can not be "removed",
strictly speaking, without also deleting those records - the distros DB table
has a field for easily deactivating them though - presumably, that controls
its visibility on the GUI form

really, debian 12 should not have been added in the first place - it was added
2 years before release - although that was before debian made the decision to
include non-free firmware by default, it was before any debian release actually
bore that version number - adding it at that time also made it to be a
duplicate of debian testing, which is what it actually was - in any case, that
complicates the situation; because it too may have gathered entries now, some
of them from before non--free firmwares was the default, and some from
afterward - those should probably all be reviewed

somewhat related, i see that trisquel 11 is not an option, though it was
released over a year ago and could have been added around the same time as
debian 12 was added - trisquel does not have an unstable release channel; so
that version number was appropriate even though it was beta at the time - i
mention that because i saw a ticket asking to add the latest trisquel beta

so this is not as straight forward as i could have been - it will need some
sorting out - i have recently been granted admin access; and i am looking
into how to address these urgent concerns now