turns out you need a "nonfree" debian image to boot with an amd gpu

@onfy huh, there's a great free amd driver though?

@noiob It requires firmware to work, which isn't considered free by Debian's standards.

@onfy all GPU drivers require firmware to work
it's just running on the GPU

but also god no one's running debian without nonfree, they should get off their high horse sometime

@noiob lmao I literally just posted "is there any PC that can actually boot on"

@onfy yeah intel or nvidia

@noiob You can boot with an Nvidia GPU using only free software and firmware?

@onfy no but free software folks don't care if they don't see the firmware, so the nouveau driver is fine

@noiob Eh... probably not. I'm expecting that not to work either with the "normal" image.

And like... I get what they're getting at, you can't truly know what it's doing in there... but also also there's kind of a logistical issue in running your totally free software when the hardware you're trying to run it on becomes nonfunctional...

@onfy I've run debian on a nvidia gpu for ages, the only thing that required non-free was the intel wifi card. The FSF's official stance is that blobs are fine if they're on external hardware and you don't have to interact with it, which is ridiculous

@noiob Wait wait... what. Is AMD doing something different then?

@noiob Actually, I'm more confused, isn't the wifi card's firmware also running on the card? I thought that was the whole point, the hardware could be spying on you or whatever.