Yeah like the other reply said, most of the actual kernel is libre since its gpl licensed, but you still need firmware blobs for a lot of devices that are proprietary. The libre kernel is patched in such a way that they don’t even allow you to load firmware if you wanted to, so you need the regular linux kernel for that.
Lots of proprietary drivers/firmware and helper-programs for those drivers. You can probably get more insight by checking out what’s included in Debian’s “non-free” and “contrib” repositories.
The “regular kernel” is not libre?
Yeah like the other reply said, most of the actual kernel is libre since its gpl licensed, but you still need firmware blobs for a lot of devices that are proprietary. The libre kernel is patched in such a way that they don’t even allow you to load firmware if you wanted to, so you need the regular linux kernel for that.
Lots of proprietary drivers/firmware and helper-programs for those drivers. You can probably get more insight by checking out what’s included in Debian’s “non-free” and “contrib” repositories.