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Does it make a difference in Debian if I install firmware in the finished system afterwards or if the installer already picks out and installs optimal firmware? I want to finally switch from Windows for good and have hardware that is a bit twitchy in places.

Windows now installs default drivers for me by default, which work but are crappy. And then of course I install the manufacturer's drivers and tell Windows to use them. I can either do this manually via the device manager or use the setup program that does this automatically. Is there such a concept under Linux at all? Let's assume I have two drivers for one device. Does the kernel then automatically choose the "best" one or how can I understand this?

For those who ask, I have different studio interfaces and other audio hardware which are listed to work theoretically (https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/wiki/hardware_support). But the same applies, for example, to WiFi cards and even microcodes from non-free.

Should I use the unofficial non-free images or can I use the official installation images?

I may should say, that I install the firmware through non-free packages.

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  • So Firmware and Drivers are not the same thing. Firmware is software written to non-volatile storage on the device itself. examples include PC BIOS or UEFI Firmware, which gets written to a chip on the motherboard, or Video Card BIOS, which gets written to a chip on the video card, or firmware for a harddisk that provides code allowing the disk to work with the disk controller interface, written to a chip on the disk drive. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware Firmware, since its written to the device itself, cannot support multiple versions/instances simultaneously.
    – Frank Thomas
    Jul 19, 2021 at 3:40
  • According to the Debian Wiki I'll install the system using non-free images to get a painless installation and a working system. Although that doesn't answer the question how the driver management works.
    – hefe
    Jul 19, 2021 at 12:03

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Unlike in Windows, on Linux systems, there is generally one set of drivers, and it's shipped with the kernel. There are sometimes drivers that are shipped out of tree for various reasons, but generally they are worse in quality and buggier, and you should always use the version shipped with the kernel unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise. Moreover, if you are using Secure Boot, you won't be able to load any drivers not shipped with the kernel at all.

If you have an out-of-tree driver that you'd rather use, you can use a blacklist directive for the unwanted module in a file in /etc/modprobe.d and then the driver you want to use should automatically be detected for your hardware. However, even in this situation, you'd want to encourage the maintainer of that out-of-tree driver to incorporate their changes into the kernel for everyone's benefit.

Some of those drivers require firmware, while others provide a basic level of functionality and then add additional features with firmware. Many drivers need no firmware at all. If you do require firmware, it doesn't matter if you install it with the OS or later on, but until you install the firmware, the driver may not work. This is very often the case for Wi-Fi drivers, which usually do require firmware and are generally completely non-functional without it.

As a result, if you want to do something like install over Wi-Fi, you may require the non-free images to get things to work during the install. Otherwise, either option is fine.

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