Comment by jasonjayr
4 years ago
Debian's default position is to only ship "free software" (OSS, libre, etc).
It is my understanding that a lot of modern GPUs that are cutting edge ship with non-oss binary blobs, which goes against Debian's core principals.
Unfortunately, it means that Debian has poor support for hardware vendors that mandate these binary blobs.
Neither AMD graphics nor Intel integrated graphics require a blob. nVidia is the only one of the big three that requires a blob for full performance.
AMD graphics require a firmware blob for all modern cards [0]. It used to be that the firmware was only needed for 3D acceleration and you could run X/text mode without the blob just fine, but that hasn't been true for years (I think since HD6000 series in 2010).
[0] https://packages.debian.org/buster/firmware-amd-graphics
My gpu works fine on newer kernels. It's not about blobs, debian is just slow.