How do I load firmware-atheros into Qubes 4.0 R5?

[Ringo]

Greetings. I have a Purism 15v3 laptop with an Atheros AR9462 wi-fi card. The card works under Qubes but it's slow, with bit-rate of only 6/mpbs. I had this issue before, on the same laptop when it was first shipped with the PureOS distribution (a debian distribution) and was able to fix it by installing a firmware package found at https://packages.debian.org/buster/firmware-atheros. However, I'm not able to install this same "firmware driver" under Qubes, since it's in debian format and not fedora.

I downloaded a tool called "alien" which was able to convert the package into RPM format but then when I tried to install it using DNF in the SYS-NET cube, I received an error saying "firmware-atheros-20170823-2.noarch" conflicts with package linux-firmware-201771215-82.git2451bb.fc26.noarch.

I'm thinking perhaps I should uninstall this conflicting package in order to install the atheros one that I know worked under PureOS, but frankly, I'm a bit out of my depth at this point and wondering if this makes sense to you all or might have other advice. Appreciate any thoughts you may have to assist.

Warm Regards, Ringo

[Chris Laprise]

I'd suggest using a Debian template for your sys-net; It takes time to
download but its fairly simple. You may want to try using the
Debian-supplied firmware first to see if that resolves the issue:

sudo apt-get install firmware-atheros

If that's not new enough you can follow Debian directions for installing
from a newer repository (e.g. Buster).

--

Chris Laprise, tas...@posteo.net
https://github.com/tasket
https://twitter.com/ttaskett
PGP: BEE2 20C5 356E 764A 73EB 4AB3 1DC4 D106 F07F 1886

[Tai...@gmx.com]

I believe in this case you should be contacting your vendor for
technical support - you certainly paid more than enough to deserve some.

I have several questions for you:
I am curious did you know pre-purchase that purisms laptops are not
actually libre, that their ME isn't disabled and that the firmware is
not "open source firmware"?
(The hardware initiation process is entirely closed source performed via
Intel's FSP binary blobs - these days unfortunately "coreboot" doesn't
really mean open source firmware)
I am also curious as to what lead to them instead of for instance the
actually owner controlled lenovo G505S for only $300 - it is a little
bit slower but the recc'ed A10 CPU is quad core (better for qubes), the
CPU/RAM init is open source, there is no ME/PSP and
Thank you for answering them

Purism fact sheet:
"Disabled ME":
It is impossible to disable ME, the HAP bit and ME_Cleaner simply nerf
it - however the kernel and any mask roms still run and have more than
enough time and code size to perform a litany of dirty tricks.

"we hand select every chip to respect your privacy and freedom"
*in reality the laptop is probably just a re-badged whitebox model (you
can't have a custom motherboard run for the volumes they are dealing
with and even an FSP coreboot port takes $100K+ sucking up a lot of
their resources)

"We will convince intel to open source XYZ":
Google attempted to get intel to open up ME and FSP for their coreboot
chromebook project but even they were re-buffed - if they can't do it
then a small company certainly can't nor would they have the resources
to backport it to the many laptops they already have released.

"We are doing the best we can"
Wrong.
There are companies that are releasing real libre firmware computers,
brand new and fast, fully open source and owner controlled (but purism
doesn't want you to know that)

[799]

Hello,

Tai...@gmx.com <Tai...@gmx.com> schrieb am Do., 29. März 2018, 20:36:

I believe in this case you should be contacting your vendor for
technical support - you certainly paid more than enough to deserve some.

[...]

"We are doing the best we can"
Wrong.
There are companies that are releasing real libre firmware computers,
brand new and fast, fully open source and owner controlled (but purism
doesn't want you to know that)

[...]

While some of your point might be true, I don't understand why Purism gets so much bashing.

Every User who buys a Purism laptop has still a better device and at least paid attention to the topic privacy than others who buy regular cheap/standard laptops.

And every user who got a Purism device and joins this community is a good thing of others are so much better, they should just improve their marketing ;-)

... and yes buying a cheaper refurbished device and installing Coreboot or libreboot might be possible, this is nothing every user can do, maybe they just want a slightly more secure device than a default windows laptop and if Purism is the reason why a user is running Linux instead of Windows/Mac this is a good thing.

If you blame Purism, than you should also be fair and request that a user inspects the Mainboard of a refurbished laptop to make sure that the device is not tampered with.

Also consider that some users just want a modell that looks sexier than the Lenovo G505.

Maybe users buy a Purism laptop and next time they buy something even more free ... That's still great.

[799]

[Tai...@gmx.com]

On 03/29/2018 02:52 PM, 799 wrote:

> Maybe users buy a Purism laptop and next time they buy something even more
> free ... That's still great.

My issue is with purisms incredibly dishonest marketing, their pressure
campaigns on the FSF, their insulting of their competitors - not their
existence in general or the practice of selling of laptops that are only
slightly more free than a dell.

You say "why do so many people bash purism" well they have done more
than enough to deserve it - and last I checked I am the only one doing
so whereas they employ plenty of shills and even probably pay
journalists to issue glorified press releases....the tech media adores
purism and refuses to publish the real facts or even just some articles
on their honest competitors and I wonder why that is.

Because of their dishonest marketing they've ruined the idea of what a
free laptop should look like in the head of the average person, sucked
away money from honest companies and prevented the existence of
crowdfunding campaigns or start-ups selling actually libre laptops - all
of these are bad.

They have set the freedom hardware movement back by a decade, even more
now that they've convinced people that they have "disabled" ME and that
intel hardware is fine to buy again (it isn't)

[Holger Levsen]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 03:38:34PM -0400, Tai...@gmx.com wrote:
> My issue is with purisms incredibly dishonest marketing, their pressure
> campaigns on the FSF, their insulting of their competitors - not their
> existence in general or the practice of selling of laptops that are only
> slightly more free than a dell.

Taiidan, this is the qubes-users mailing list, ment to discuss issues
and joys with Qubes OS. Whatever you think of Purism is really not
suited that well on this list. If you want to educate people, I'd like
to suggest you take it elsewhere, either private or some other public
list or setup a wiki page or whatever.

If everybody beats up their favorite horse on this list, this list
will become a lot more noisy and less useful for everyone. For example I
don't think using Thunderbird for reading email is a reasonable choice
for users interested in reasonable security, but I wont mention that in
every (not even any...) thread discussing thunderbird. Same can be said
about many many topics.

Thanks for consideration.


--
cheers,
Holger

[ja...@brucejones.biz]

Thanks for the tip. That's a great workaround. Impressive aspect of Qubes is that is makes a solution like this so simply. Of course, now I need to learn more about how to setup different sys-net and stuff like that but it's great to have such flexibility in the OS. This is really powerful. Thanks!

[js...@riseup.net]

Holger Levsen:

Hi Holger,

I actually kinda like that Taiidan brings up these issues once in a
while. Whether or not someone agrees with them about the purism issue,
talking about this stuff on the list causes people to think more about
security/privacy, which is a good thing.

I mean yea maybe a really lengthy in depth discussion could be taken off
list, but I think conversations that aren't completely strictly on topic
(security/privacy in general, or free/libre hardware, instead of
qubes-specific) can be good because it gets people thinking about these
issues.

And your thoughts on thunderbird would be useful too, not everyone has
to agree :)

-Jackie

[Chris Laprise]

The Debian 9 version of Network Manager is probably recent enough where
you can just switch sys-net's template from fedora-26 to debian-9.

[ja...@brucejones.biz]

On Wednesday, March 28, 2018 at 5:37:04 PM UTC-4, Chris Laprise wrote:

Update1: Wow, what a great suggestion! I didn't even need to download anything. All I had to do was change the template from fedora to debian in the sys-net virtual machine settings and presto, it worked! I couldn't believe how simple this was. Thanks for the suggestion! BTW, appreciate the other comments regarding Purism, etc. I'm new to this space and was not aware what all to consider. I'll look around in other posts to try and do more research for best libre machine next time I'm in the market. Thanks for your help!

[Tai...@gmx.com]

I am more than happy to help the next time you are in the market for a
computer :] it is a damn shame how dishonest purism is....but there are
still some honest companies out there selling real libre products.

Btw the debian template is not as secure due to their silly position on
starting unconfigured daemons by default the moment you install them.

[Tai...@gmx.com]

On 03/30/2018 09:24 AM, Holger Levsen wrote:

On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 03:38:34PM -0400, Tai...@gmx.com wrote:

My issue is with purisms incredibly dishonest marketing, their pressure
campaigns on the FSF, their insulting of their competitors - not their
existence in general or the practice of selling of laptops that are only
slightly more free than a dell.

Taiidan, this is the qubes-users mailing list, ment to discuss issues
and joys with Qubes OS.

It has been about more than just qubes for a long time now - general privacy/security threads are good to have.
I have been here for years and on other ML's for longer so I know it is better to not have strict on-topic rules.
Not to mention that for a long time purisms laptops were recommended by the purism developers (so I believe it is somewhat on topic) in exchange for kickbacks despite being a terrible choice for privacy/security my for the price of one purism you could have bought both a nice owner controlled laptop (G505S) and a libre VM gaming desktop (KCMA-D8 or KGPE-D16 plus other parts) that both run qubes 4.0.

Whatever you think of Purism is really not
suited that well on this list.

Why?

If you want to educate people, I'd like to suggest you take it elsewhere.

Where exactly? To some place maybe a "free speech zone" where no one will hear me or care?

either private

Private? what?

or some other public list or setup a wiki page or whatever.

If everybody beats up their favorite horse on this list, this list
will become a lot more noisy and less useful for everyone. For example I
don't think using Thunderbird for reading email is a reasonable choice
for users interested in reasonable security, but I wont mention that in
every (not even any...) thread discussing thunderbird. Same can be said
about many many topics.

I would definitely appreciate a thunderbird thread and I think you should make one as how I make my counter-puricrapism posts.
I am the only critical voice whereas purism has the entire tech media on their side somehow issuing glorified press releases and always failing to mention that their marketing is full of lies.