I am on a ThinkPad with intel cpu and igpu, nothing from amd, nvidia or others above… So last time I just thought it must be for devices I may externally plug in via usb or something and didn’t pay much attention…
but today after second thought, if it’s for devices then the external devices must have their own firmware, I should only have drivers not firmware for them…
So may as well ask here, why these are there without any use?
$ pamac info linux-firmware
Name : linux-firmware
Version : 20260519-1
Description : Firmware files for Linux - Default set
URL : https://gitlab.com/kernel-firmware/linux-firmware
Licenses : CC0-1.0
Repository : core
Groups : --
Depends On : linux-firmware-amdgpu linux-firmware-atheros linux-firmware-broadcom
linux-firmware-cirrus linux-firmware-intel linux-firmware-mediatek
linux-firmware-nvidia linux-firmware-other linux-firmware-radeon
linux-firmware-realtek
Optional Dependencies : linux-firmware-liquidio: Firmware for Cavium LiquidIO server adapters
linux-firmware-marvell: Firmware for Marvell devices
linux-firmware-mellanox: Firmware for Mellanox Spectrum switches
linux-firmware-nfp: Firmware for Netronome Flow Processors
linux-firmware-qcom: Firmware for Qualcomm SoCs
linux-firmware-qlogic: Firmware for QLogic devices
Provides : --
Replaces : --
Conflicts With : --
Packager : Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig) <heftig@archlinux.org>
Build Date : ons 20 maj 2026 02:22:54 CEST
Validated By : MD5 Sum SHA-256 Sum Signature
Just be absolutely sure what you remove and why and keep a live usb at hand. Sometimes the less important chips are from other manufacturers, so it is possible that your intel based pc has lan or bluetooth or wifi controllers that are not intel. Do your research. inxi -zv8 or hardinfo2 are good starting points.
From the above list on an intel thinkpad with only igpu you can certainly remove radeon, amdgpu, nvidia. Then check who is the producer of your network stuff, modem etc. and keep in mind atheros and broadcom are one company now…also mediatek and ralink are merged, so there can be some wifi or lan card even on intels…and i would certainly keep whence and others.
If it’s only taking the space on SSD then I don’t really mind it being there…
But if they use Ram or some other resources, I may want to remove them,
Maybe they’ll use a minute or two extra during updates… that’s fine.
after all Linux kernel itself has a lot of stuff unnecessary for system but it’s not a problem.
Just tested - works indeed, although more informational about version of drivers instead of vendors (inxi seems to do a better job here). Note that the quotes are not escaped in grub. Without the kernel parameter only one of the wifi lines is shown.
my fw
Mai 24 15:50:05 manjaro kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: Loaded FW: i915/icl_dmc_ver1_09.bin, sha256: aafad1967679baa36e971e5331da>
Mai 24 15:50:09 teo-lenovo-v15 kernel: faux_driver regulatory: Loaded FW: regulatory.db, sha256: 3d437be973206ca41b7f4e8bb6c>
Mai 24 15:50:09 teo-lenovo-v15 kernel: faux_driver regulatory: Loaded FW: regulatory.db.p7s, sha256: 138cd89205b9612ea3df9ea>
Mai 24 15:50:09 teo-lenovo-v15 kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: Loaded FW: iwlwifi-QuZ-a0-jf-b0-77.ucode, sha256: 406aac6f3cec7>
Mai 24 15:50:09 teo-lenovo-v15 kernel: iwlwifi 0000:00:14.3: loaded firmware version 77.f39cc7f9.0 QuZ-a0-jf-b0-77.ucode op_>
Mai 24 15:50:10 teo-lenovo-v15 kernel: r8169 0000:01:00.0: Loaded FW: rtl_nic/rtl8168h-2.fw, sha256: 0b4beab008e308f28296c13>
Mai 24 15:50:10 teo-lenovo-v15 kernel: bluetooth hci0: Loaded FW: intel/ibt-19-0-1.sfi, sha256: 2e6a2027b9eeb3aa94255f10752b>
Mai 24 15:50:12 teo-lenovo-v15 kernel: bluetooth hci0: Loaded FW: intel/ibt-19-0-1.ddc, sha256: fe272982577efdc289cfe3e8beda>
~
That is what i left too, but this is not meant to be a recommendation, everybody bears the responsibility for their system.
Others has a gazillion of small things and is 27 MB, whence is 400 KB - it is not worth the risk (and the time waste to chroot and restore if something breaks for sparing 20 megs).