On Fri, Jul 1, 2022 at 1:57 PM Ben Cotton bcotton@redhat.com wrote:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Linux_Firmware_Minimization
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.
== Summary == Split linux-firmware into more subpackages, and add the ability to automatically install firmware based on the hardware present
== Owner ==
- Name: [[User:Salimma|Michel Alexandre Salim]],
[[User:Dcavalca|Davide Cavalca]]
- Email: michel@fb.com, dcavalca@fb.com
== Detailed Description == The `linux-firmware` RPM is very large (175M src.rpm, 287M *.noarch.rpm per 20211027-126) that bundles most of the system firmware loaded by the kernel, regardless of whether it’s actually needed. Some additional firmwares are already split up into individual subpackages. This change would extend that, splitting out most firmare into appropriate subpackages. The Change would also make the subpackages `Supplements` the appropriate `modalias(...)` for the hardware they support and `Provides` `firmware(kmodname/firmwarefile.bin)`
Candidates for splitting out:
- CPU firmwares
- GPU firmwares
- Non-Intel wifi firmwares
- Bluetooth firmwares
Conversely some firmware could probably be grouped together, e.g. have iwlwifi-firmware that pulls in iwl*-firmware (corresponding to openSUSE's kernel-firmware-iwlwifi).
We will also introduce `linux-firmware-all` that will pull in all subpackages; this will make it easier to manage the firmware packages in different Fedora variants.
A DNF plugin will be written to make use of the `Supplements` metadata to automatically install the appropriate firmware packages based on the hardware present on the system (see openSUSE's `libzypp`: https://github.com/openSUSE/libzypp/blob/a34d857dbe3b16d4a7e0219cd213cc5a879... and https://github.com/openSUSE/libzypp/blob/7f345ea4892fd02345e8de47c2a08ab5b17...)
== Feedback ==
== Benefit to Fedora == This would save a lot of disk space on Fedora installations, and make it easier to test individual firmware updates by replacing a single subpackage. It will also bring us into alignment with openSUSE (see their [https://code.opensuse.org/package/kernel-firmware/blob/master/f/kernel-firmw... kernel-firmware.spec]).
This is sorely needed, and I'm really looking forward to this being implemented!