The great non-free-firmware transition

TL;DR: Dear Kali user, when you have a moment, check your /etc/apt/sources.list, and add non-free-firmware if ever it’s missing.

Programmatically speaking:

kali@kali:~$ sudo sed -i 's/non-free$/non-free non-free-firmware/' /etc/apt/sources.list

Long story now.

As you might know already, Kali Linux is a . However, this changed last year, when . However, so far it’s been empty, and firmware were still part of the non-free component. This changed last week: firmware are now located in the non-free-firmware component. In practice, it means that non-free-firmware must be enabled in your /etc/apt/sources.list, otherwise firmware would not get updated when you run your favorite command apt update && apt full-upgrade.

For anyone who installed Kali post 2023.1, non-free-firmware is already enabled in your sources.list. But it does not hurt to check, so here’s how it should look like:

kali@kali:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free non-free-firmware

If ever non-free-firmware is missing, please edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list to add it. Or, just do it with this one-liner:

kali@kali:~$ sudo sed -i 's/non-free$/non-free non-free-firmware/' /etc/apt/sources.list

Then complete the job with the traditional sudo apt update. No error? You’re done.

Thanks for your attention!