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Linux firmware

From ArchWiki

Linux firmware is a collection of firmware binary blobs distributed alongside the kernel, necessary for partial or full functionality of certain hardware devices. These binary blobs were never permitted to include in a GPL'd work, but have been permitted to redistribute under separate cover.

Typical kinds of hardware requiring firmware:

Installation

Install the linux-firmware meta package to pull all commonly used firmware. This is the recommended way for most users. To save some space you could opt into installing firmware only for individual hardware vendors your system use.

Warning Lack of necessary firmware could make your system inoperable.

Primary packages pulled by linux-firmware:

Optional packages:

Third-party packages:

Tips and tricks

Detecting loaded firmware

Sometimes you want to know what firmware is loaded by your system, for debugging or to pick firmware packages to install.

That could be achieved using dynamic debug:

  • Add dyndbg="func fw_log_firmware_info +p" to the kernel parameters. Note that the quotes may need to be escaped depending upon boot loader.
  • List loaded firmware with
    # journalctl -kg 'loaded f'

See also