Is it safe to remove linux-firmware package in a virtualized environment?

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Hi there.

I found that linux-firmware is the biggest package in a MiaB setup, taking 312MiB of disk space.

I suppose that no firmware is necesary when running on a VPS.
What do you think? Is it safe to remove that package?

Thank you and regards.

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Remove the ones you don’t need. Some of the firmware package is used for drivers (hence the name) I’d leave it alone. 312M is nothing.

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312M is nothing.

(Minor rant) Oh dear oh dear oh dear. I remember when … It’s true that 312M is trivial these days, and Linux is way more compact than Windows, but we’re much too quick to accept bloated, low quality software. The storage size isn’t really the issue (I’m first to agree that storage is really cheap).

But every package that gets dragged in, and every library that gets carried around, brings more bugs, more leaks, and more holes; uses more resources, and requires more power. (A good reason NOT to add yet another “feature”.)

And the more we drag in opaque libraries and modules, the less we actually understand what’s going on. Look at typical problem solving and debugging discussions. It’s very unusual to see “this is what happens, here is the fault, and this is the fix.” It’s much more normal to see “well, I changed X to Y and turned off Z, and I no longer see the problem (for now).”

Oh dear. Keep it small, and keep it simple. (Rant over.)

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Maybe we should migrate MiaB to Tiny Core? (o;

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a 10 MEGABYTE hard drive was huge? :stuck_out_tongue:

Oh, the good old days.

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Please forgive me, but can you please explain this “hard drive”?

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312M is still small even when considering the firmware and kernel hold what is effectively drivers for the system. Comparing that to windows, where wifi driver packages can be up to 500M I’d say it’s pretty compact. but I agree, you start accepting all the small packages, or changes and all the sudden you are using a lot of space.

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I think that 312MiB can be almost nothing or too much, depending on circumstances.

A clean MiaB installation, with two kernels (latest and prevous one for backup purposes), takes 4.1 Gib of disk space. 312 MiB is a 7,5% of that. Not bad for a single package.

The point is… Is it safe to remove linux-firmware on a VPS environment?
I think it should be, but I would like to know other people´s thougths.

Regards.

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I am truly curious, why would anyone suppose that?

Honestly, I am not overly knowledgeable about virtualization — but doesn’t it depend on the TYPE of virtualization? Something that is not stated in the OP.

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You know this thing in a computer with a spinning disc that magnetically records data. People still use them, don’t they? I mean I have several in each of my PC’s, so I am not sure I follow the question.

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I can’t imagine why a VPS provider would setup regular VMs that would require firmware loading on the guest.

I think that firmware is usually necessary to be able to run some specific hardware (some GPUs, some network cards, and the like…).

I think that the most typical scenario for MiaB is to be running on vanilla VMs with no need to access special hardware on the host via passthrough or whatever.

So, i don’t see why firmware would be necessary in these cases.

I’m not asking to change MiaB to remove the package.
I’m only asking if people here thinks that is safe/OK to remove the package in regular VMs setups.

Thanks and regards.

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