Ubuntu developers have recently started a discussion over possibly splitting up the "linux-firmware" package into multiple sub-packages given the growing size of all the different firmware binaries needed to support the diverse range of hardware supported by the Linux kernel. It's nice in theory for helping to reduce the install footprint of Ubuntu Linux but in practice will be difficult to pull off without potentially risking the out-of-the-box hardware support on Ubuntu Linux.

Canonical engineer Juerg Haefliger started the discussion on Monday over the idea of potentially splitting up the linux-firmware package given its continually growing size. Among the initial ideas were punting off the graphics firmware files into their own separate vendored packages.

But without the necessary firmware files at boot, especially for GPUs, it leads to a very degraded or inoperable experience. And thus a whole can of worms for how to deal with the continually growing size of firmware files within the linux-firmware repository but without risking hardware support. The Ubuntu installer would need to be adapted for determining which firmware packages could be removed for a given system and the process to go for upgrading hardware on an existing Ubuntu Linux install that may then need currently uninstalled firmware files.

Wired and wireless networking drivers are another area frequently needing firmware files in linux-firmware for operation with their upstream open-source kernel drivers. But if those firmware files aren't present, Ubuntu users could be left without networking. GPUs though remain one of the areas with the largest and still-significantly-growing areas of the linux-firmware repository, but without those files present for the upstream Linux drivers, users are left without any hardware acceleration and for some GPUs even lack of proper mode-setting and can lead to blank screens. Meanwhile for CPUs and other hardware able to run with firmware baked onto the hardware, relying on outdated firmware/microcode can raise security concerns.

The Ubuntu discussion over splitting up the Linux firmware packages was raised in [1]this Ubuntu devel thread . The issue of properly handling hardware upgrades on Ubuntu with graceful firmware handling was raised and is certainly one of the main issues. One of the possible solutions would be for splitting up Linux firmware packages for firmware files specific to only certain architectures, e.g. firmware blobs catering to IP found exclusively on say ARM or RISC-V SoCs isn't necessary on Ubunt x86_64. There's the possibility to trim some install size of linux-firmware by doing some level of segregation based on firmware exclusive to a given CPU architecture but that will still leave the vast majority of firmware files untouched.

It will be interesting to see if/what Ubuntu developers decide to do for pulling in the ever growing size of the linux-firmware aresnal of firmware blobs as it is a problem that will eventually need to be addressed.



[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2025-June/043358.html