Hi.
I wanted to try PureOS and get to know it but it does not seem to work with Vega 11 graphics (the driver/firmware is not picked up). It has been quite some time since this APU was released and I wondered if it will be supported in the neares future. It probably depends on whether Debian has any plans for supporting it (I tried Debian to test is and it has the same issue with Vega 11), but could I expect the support for this APU?
Thanks.
PureOS only includes 100% free software - if the drivers aren’t completely open source, then PureOS won’t have them. Debian is the same by default, though Debian does make it possible to install non-free drivers. PureOS isn’t a great choice for most hardware, since most hardware requires proprietary drivers.
Thanks for the reply.
I do understand the philosophy of PureOS. I wanted to give the OS a try before making a financial decisions.
Do you mean that PureOS will actively prevent the non-free drivers from loading, or that it just will not have them out of the box and will allow installing like Debian does?
the 2400g APU from AMD is just a higher performance non-freedom-respecting “alternative” to the integrated-gpu in the Librem 13/15. it can be run in gnu/linux distributions that support both RYF standards and non-RYF standards (basically are not to concerned with ethics just user base). it’s best to only use them with machines that are rarely online or not at all if possible.
free-software is a win for everyone and non-free is just for “some”
Well, this 2400G APU is what I have at the moment, and before I consider buying other hardware, I would like to test what PureOS is and if it is something that I would like to have, and if I can do the things that I need to do on that OS. I will not blindly buy it regardless of the reviews or the feedback.
I believe that there should be a possibility to run the OS the the non-free/“unsafe” mode with the red background (if you wish) or a big popup in the startup that says you are running a non-free driver or something, but give a chance for people to get a feeling of the OS.
At the same time, you can say that this OS was meant to run ONLY on the Librem hardware, like Apple does, for example.
PureOS won’t prevent you from doing anything - a major goal of Purism is ensuring you are free to do whatever you want with your hardware and software, even if whatever you want includes installing non-free software/drivers.
However, PureOS does not make it easy to install non-free drivers. For example, Debian has the non-free repository, which you can add and then relatively easily find various drivers. PureOS does not have or provide easy access to such a repo. Basically, to install non-free stuff, you have to go out of your way. You can add the Debain non-free repo, and since PureOS is based on Debian and very few deviations, things should probably work (though I know one of the PureOS maintainers is against such hybrid systems that use repos from multiple distributions).
I wouldn’t say that PureOS was meant to run ONLY on the Librem hardware. However, I will say that Librem hardware was carefully chosen to work with PureOS - all the hardware was selected to run with open drivers wherever possible. For instance, the Wifi/Bluetooth card that Librems use has open WiFi, but not open Bluetooth, so Librem laptops do not ship with functioning Bluetooth out of the box, because that would requie non-free drivers.
Librems are not the only laptops which work with free software, but there are not that many, so if you want to get the PureOS feel on most hardware, I would say just use Debian-testing. You won’t get the integrated boot stack (PureBoot), which has some extra security features, but the post-boot, user-facing experience should be similar.
Thanks for the info! Now I get a better idea of how it works, and that the “only free drivers” policy is on the repository level and a user can add other repositories and load the non-free drivers and so on.
I managed to get PureOS working on Virtual Box, and now I get a better resolution:
So I will be able to test around the functionality.
