The Debian Libre Live Images allows you to run and install Debian GNU/Linux without non-free software.
The general goal is to provide a way to use Debian without reliance on non-free software, to the extent possible within the Debian project.
One challenge are the official Debian live and installer images. Since the 2022 decision on non-free firmware, the official images for bookworm and trixie contains non-free software.
The Debian Libre Live Images project provides Live ISO images for
Intel/AMD-compatible 64-bit x86 CPUs (amd64) built without any
non-free software, suitable for running and installing Debian. The
images are similar to the Debian Live
Images distributed as Debian live
images.
One advantage of Debian Libre Live Images is that you do not need to agree to the distribution terms and usage license agreements of the non-free blobs included in the official Debian images. The rights to your own hardware won't be crippled by the legal restrictions that follows from relying on those non-free blobs. The usage of your own machine is no longer limited to what the non-free firmware license agreements allows you to do. This improve your software supply-chain situation, since you no longer need to consider their implication on your computing environment for your liberty, privacy or security. Inclusion of non-free firmware is a vehicle for xz-style attacks. For more information about the advantages of free software, see the FSF's page on What is Free Software?.
Libre Live images for Debian GNU/Linux 13 "trixie" on amd64:
See also the Debian Libre Live Images project pages on GitLab.com.
Download images:
wget https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/74667529/packages/generic/debian-libre-live/main/live-image-amd64.hybrid.iso
wget https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/74667529/packages/generic/debian-libre-live/main/live-image-amd64.hybrid.iso.SHA256SUMS
sha256sum -c live-image-amd64.hybrid.iso.SHA256SUMS
Run in a virtual machine:
kvm -cdrom live-image-amd64.hybrid.iso -m 8G
Burn to an USB drive for installation on real hardware:
sudo dd if=live-images-amd64.hybrid.iso of=/dev/sdX # use sdX for USB drive
Most of the Debian CD FAQ applies to our images. See also the Debian Installation Guide.
This is early work, and the primary audience are people already familiar with Debian. Successful installation on several laptops, desktops and servers have been completed. Some installation reports are available under issues. If you install using these images please open an issue as an installation report to allows other to gain understanding and confidence in what works. Of course, for anything not working, please open issues to start discussion.
Images are built using live-build from the Debian Live Team. Inspiration has been taken from Reproducible Live Images and Kali Live.
The images are built by GitLab CI/CD shared runners. The pipeline
.gitlab-ci.yml
container job creates a container with live-build installed, defined
in
container/Containerfile.
The build job then invokes
run.sh
that includes a run to lb build, and then upload the image to the
package
registry.
Finally, there is a job pages that create GitLab pages which are
exposed as libre.debian.net.
Any file in this project is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
See the file COPYING or https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html for license text.