Debian Warns Of Hyper Threading Issue With Intel Sky/Kaby Lake CPUs

[andrei_me]

This only happens for those who doesn't use Debian testing with XFCE and 1kHz kernel

[dungeon]

This only happens if user is like that non-free beheaded Serious Sam kamikaze model



I mean really it is about installing one package or not... and if user can't decide there on "Yes or No" that must be hardest thing to answer likely

It is like reading EULA... if you agree then download it from intel site these firmwares and if you don't agree then do not download it

[soulsource]

More like dangerous to run Debian. You're telling me that I'm supposed to run this crap on a production system and disable one of the biggest perks of having a Core i7? HAHA! No. Their refusal to ship device firmware is really stupid. The whole reason we have firmware is to avoid precisely this kind of situation.

Back in the 90s when Intel processors didn't have replaceable firmware, things like the Pentium FDIV and F00F bugs required removing the processor and sending it to Intel for a replacement.

The processors that misbehave under Debian won't misbehave under Fedora, because Fedora ships and updates linux-firmware quite often. Also, my wifi works.

It's funny how Debian goes to all this trouble to be "Free", but then they package things like Widevine, Flash, RAR, etc. and just say that it's not officially part of Debian. The FSF has Debian on the non-recommended list of distributions even though Debian policy makes it much harder than necessary to set your computer up properly and most people end up figuring out a way to get the firmware anyway because they have devices that don't work without it. There is no functional difference, spare a little disk space used, of making available and pre-installing the firmware, since if you don't have the device, it will never get loaded, and few (if any) users want their computer to be non-functional in some way if it's missing.

Fedora is actually more Free by the FSF's own guidelines than Debian is. While Fedora ships firmware, the FSF would declare Debian non-Free for suggesting the firmware or making it available, which it does, but Fedora does not suggest, pre-install, or make available the non-Free software that is hosted by Debian. They don't stop you from installing it yourself from RPM Fusion and they don't try to break it (which would make an operating system non-Free if it did), but RPM Fusion is another project that is not made available by default or recommended by the Fedora project websites.

While there is some effort to set Fedora up, critical hardware isn't broken out-of-the-box simply due to lack of firmware. Debian has picked some odd policies and it continues to do so.

Also, after a while, Debian Stable becomes crusty enough that it won't work properly on new-ish hardware. Not only is the kernel Linux that it ships with sufficiently old that it still has a bunch of Skylake behavior that will make your laptop less efficient and will run down your battery, they insist on breaking the wifi chip until you can install the iwlwifi firmware (which is more of a pain because modern laptops don't have ethernet ports!), *and* to top it off, if you don't disable Hyperthreading, then certain Skylake processors will malfunction on Debian unless the manufacturer releases a new BIOS, which, guess what, probably only installs if you have Windows(!) all because Debian won't ship firmware for the kernel to replace on boot to solve things like this, like a sane OS does.

I don't even consider Debian. The people making their policies are braindead. There shouldn't be a struggle to set up a modern operating system. Sure, there are things to install and settings to tweak in Fedora, but it's not effing broken right out of the gate.

Right now I pretty much use Fedora because on other distributions my laptop is somewhat broken and finding out why or fixing it robs me of the time that I could be using my computer. If I ever want Long Term Stable, I'll go with CentOS. Whenever 8 is out, I guess. You could conceivably install CentOS and never have to do a distribution upgrade again. It's supported for longer than a Debian Stable or Ubuntu LTS, and it gets feature and driver backports.

Debian does not install any of the non-free programs you listed by default, just as Debian does not install non-free firmware by default. One can just go and install the firmware-linux-nonfree package, what one probably will do anyhow, simply because most GPUs require firmware, that is available through the same package. Or, one can just install Debian using the installation medium that comes with firmware preinstalled...

[moilami]

Review of Debian 9: Broken Broken Broken Stupid Stupid Stupid. Full Stop. There doesn't exist a universe where "We're going to leave you with the equally non-free broken BIOS-provided firmware instead of shipping the patch." makes sense.

No, Debian 9 is not broken at all. It works very well in my computer and in thousands computers around the world. It is the best version of Debian so far too. What is broken is certain Intel CPUs.

Hilarious how the messenger was being tried to be killed.

[moilami]

Yeah, but for some arcane reason some subsets of free software enthusiasts go rampage if the same firmware is loaded on runtime instead than from a ROM on the board.
Debian is on this bandwagon for example.

As they should. When the firmware was not possible to be changed during boot there naturally was no problem. But now as it is possible to change firmware during boot, then of course it should be considered as software, and it should be possible to be studied, modified and shared like any other free software.

[bridgman]

As they should. When the firmware was not possible to be changed during boot there naturally was no problem. But now as it is possible to change firmware during boot, then of course it should be considered as software, and it should be possible to be studied, modified and shared like any other free software.

That's a big conceptual leap. CPU microcode has been changeable during boot for at least 40 years, maybe 50.

Are you saying that because you can replace your graphics card or network adapter it should be considered as software as well ?

Let's say the graphics card has microcode stored on the board somewhere (perhaps a socketed ROM). If you plug in a ROM containing a new version of hardware microcode does that mean it should now be considered as software ? How about if the ROM is not socketed but you plug in a new graphics adapter identical to the old one but with newer microcode in the ROM ?

How about if the microcode is stored in flash on the graphics card. You update the flash with new hardware microcode - does that magically make it become software ?

Is there some "threshold of convenience" which, when crossed, turns microcode from part of the hardware design to "obviously software" ?

[Krejzi]

[    0.000000] microcode: microcode updated early to revision 0xba, date = 2017-04-09

I'm safe, it seems.

[chithanh]

The threshold is not convenience. For the FSF, free software is an ethical question and not a practical one.

As long as it is software that is not typically updated but remains the same over the lifetime of the device, then it can be considered part of the hardware. This is often the case for ROMs.
But when the user is expected to update the software regularly, it becomes a tool for user subjugation.

[starshipeleven]

As they should. When the firmware was not possible to be changed during boot there naturally was no problem. But now as it is possible to change firmware during boot, then of course it should be considered as software, and it should be possible to be studied, modified and shared like any other free software.

Huh? It's possible to reflash it in the BIOS too, so why SPI chips are treated differently from internal storage?
Now with UEFI it's tehcnically not possible anymore as most of that stuff is signed by hardware manufacturer, but with BIOS it was as easy as finding where it was on flash and use flashrom.

[starshipeleven]

But when the user is expected to update the software regularly, it becomes a tool for user subjugation.

Yeah, let's not update freely redistributable microcodes claiming it's user subjugation (when it's not by a long shot), and ignore the reality of modern electronics that can't come out perfect and fully functional from fab.

Really, it's when ethics is applied without any regard for the actual reality that it becomes fundamentalist bullshit.