Consider splitting linux-firmware further
| Task Info (Flyspray) | |
|---|---|
| Opened By | Emil (xexaxo) |
| Task ID | 77653 |
| Type | Feature Request |
| Project | Arch Linux |
| Category | Packages: Core |
| Version | None |
| OS | All |
| Opened | 2023-02-26 15:51:38 UTC |
| Status | Assigned |
| Assignee | Laurent Carlier (lordheavy) |
Details
Description:
Early in 2022 out firmware package got a) xz compression and b) enterprise-y firmware was split into sub-packages, currently linux-firmware is at ~130/150M (compressed vs installed). While it's far more manageable it still provides fairly large "overhead" wrt what Arch users need - somewhere between 2x and 8x.
Of all the firmware, ~120 MiB fits into the following categories:
Wifi/BT/NIC
- 43 MiB iwlwifi* - Intel Wifi
- 20 MiB {ar,ath}* - Atheros Wifi/Bt
- 14 MiB intel/ibt* - Intel BT
- 6 MiB brcm* - Broadcom, b43 might be incoming?
- 2 MiB {RTL,rtl,rtw}* - Realtek
GPU
- 23 MiB amdgpu - various GPUs, hw blocks and multiple versions of each
- 8 MiB i915 - Gen9+ GPUs only
- 4 MiB radeon - ancient AMD radeons also should we include r128?
- 3 MiB nvidia - huge GSP firmware might be incoming?
In the typical setup, people would have GPU/Wifi/BT of a 1-2 vendors, be that one or multiple devices. Where the rest is more or less dead weight.
Let's pick some of my machines for example:
- i915 Gen8 + Intel Wifi/BT - 60M applicable
- AMGPU + Realtek Wifi/BT - 25M applicable
- AMGPU + Intel Wifi/BT + Realtek NIC - 82M applicable
- i915 Gen9 + Nvidia GPU + Realteck NIC - 18M applicable
My proposal is to split out each section listed above as it's own sub-package. Or at the very least the larger ones like Intel Wifi, Intel BT, Atheros, AMDGPU.
Thanks in advance
Additional info:
- package version(s) linux-firmware 20230210.bf4115c-1