Thanks @irvinewade . I have a tangential question that might be better as its own post: are any of the firmware blobs “sticky”? That is, would I “taint” the hardware by booting something other than PureOS?
Yes, I believe so. Probably most of them.
In the case of WiFi, it at least in some minor sense depends on which WiFi card you have (old: Redpine Systems, or new: SparkLAN). Tips & Tricks · Wiki · Librem5 / docs / Librem 5 Community Wiki · GitLab
If you have that level of concern then, yes, you are accepting that (small?) risk in trying a different os - with the understanding that all blobs are bad / all blobs are by definition opaque / you cannot assert with certainty that a Purism-supplied blob is safer than a blob coming from somewhere else (depending of course on what that ‘somewhere else’ is, and I guess depending on what your threat model is).
On the other hand, quite a few users of the Librem 5 have tried out and/or continue to run alternative operating systems i.e. other than PureOS.
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I should have been more clear in my question. If I try another distro, which may not be free of proprietary firmware, and then revert back to PureOS (by flashing?), will the PureOS “clean up” the previously installed blobs?
If the firmware is in /lib/firmware it will not survive reflashing with an OS that does not have it.
Thanks @j_s, that’s good info. I’m not sure that directly addresses the question, though: Can a non-PureOS install put something into hardware that stays there beyond the reflashing of PureOS on my L5?
Theoretically - yes. Practically - I’d say that only Redpine card’s firmware could be at such “risk”, as its kernel driver has an ability to automatically flash the firmware if the one on the card doesn’t match the one in /lib/firmware when compiled with certain kernel config options enabled. Anything else tends to be a bit more involved.
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I remember the first time I installed a Linux distribution to my Windows PC. I did an fdisk, formatted the hard drive, and installed Redhat Linux. Upon first boot into Linux, the Microsoft Windows logo flashed across the screen before the Linux booting process started. How dare Windows stay present in my PC after I removed all partitions and reformatted the hard drive. I learned later how to get rid of the Windows logo and why it was left behind. It all depends on which tools you use and what tools you find to root-out anything left behind. Most often there is no conspiracy to do anything malicious to you. It’s usually about sloppy programming or slight hardware incompatabilities.