Earlier today Jai Harrison mentioned an application called vrms, this is a virtual Richard M. Stallman and it’s function is to tell you what packages you have installed that are not completely Free software. It is a command line tool, you can install it with sudo apt-get install vrms, or through Synaptic if you like. After installing just type vrms at a command line and you should get results like this:
alan@webbook:~$ vrms
Non-free packages installed on webbook
fglrx-modaliases Identifiers supported by the ATI graphics driver
human-icon-theme Human Icon theme
linux-generic Complete Generic Linux kernel
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.27 modules helper script
linux-restricted-modules- Restricted Linux modules for generic kernels
nvidia-173-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-177-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-71-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
nvidia-96-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
tangerine-icon-theme Tangerine Icon theme
Contrib packages installed on webbook
flashplugin-nonfree Adobe Flash Player plugin installer
nvidia-common Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers
10 non-free packages, 0.7% of 1345 installed packages.
2 contrib packages, 0.1% of 1345 installed packages.
so that is a bunch of things for the nvidia and ATI graphics cards which we don’t need, flash which I can live without for a few minutes, plus some icons and some scary looking kernel bits and bobs. including the two packages with truncated names starting linux-restricted-modules-, lets find out what their real names are by looking at the vrms manual
alan@webbook:~$ man vrms
it turns out that there is a –sparse option to vrms which just prints the package names, lets give that a go
alan@webbook:~$ vrms --sparse
fglrx-modaliases
human-icon-theme
linux-generic
linux-restricted-modules-common
linux-restricted-modules-generic
nvidia-173-modaliases
nvidia-177-modaliases
nvidia-71-modaliases
nvidia-96-modaliases
tangerine-icon-theme
flashplugin-nonfree
nvidia-common
OK, so it was linux-restricted-modules-common and linux-restricted-modules-generic. Now lets strip things out using apt-get remove –purge which is the equivalent to selecting “mark for complete removal” against each package in Synaptic, it gets rid of any configuration files that might be left hanging about.
alan@webbook:~$ sudo apt-get remove --purge fglrx-modaliases human-icon-theme linux-generic linux-restricted-modules-common linux-restricted-modules-generic nvidia-173-modaliases nvidia-177-modaliases nvidia-71-modaliases nvidia-96-modaliases tangerine-icon-theme flashplugin-nonfree nvidia-common
[sudo] password for alan:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
linux-headers-2.6.27-7 linux-headers-2.6.27-7-generic binutils-static hsolink
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED
fglrx-modaliases* flashplugin-nonfree* human-icon-theme* human-theme* linux-generic*
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-7-generic* linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-9-generic* linux-restricted-modules-common*
linux-restricted-modules-generic* nvidia-173-modaliases* nvidia-177-modaliases* nvidia-71-modaliases*
nvidia-96-modaliases* nvidia-common* tangerine-icon-theme* ubuntu-artwork* ubuntu-desktop*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 17 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 13.4MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 150075 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing fglrx-modaliases ...
Removing flashplugin-nonfree ...
Purging configuration files for flashplugin-nonfree ...
Removing ubuntu-desktop ...
Removing ubuntu-artwork ...
Purging configuration files for ubuntu-artwork ...
Removing human-theme ...
Removing human-icon-theme ...
Purging configuration files for human-icon-theme ...
Removing linux-generic ...
Removing linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-7-generic ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
Purging configuration files for linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-7-generic ...
Removing linux-restricted-modules-generic ...
Removing linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-9-generic ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-9-generic
Purging configuration files for linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-9-generic ...
Removing linux-restricted-modules-common ...
Purging configuration files for linux-restricted-modules-common ...
Removing nvidia-common ...
Purging configuration files for nvidia-common ...
Removing nvidia-173-modaliases ...
Removing nvidia-177-modaliases ...
Removing nvidia-71-modaliases ...
Removing nvidia-96-modaliases ...
Removing tangerine-icon-theme ...
Purging configuration files for tangerine-icon-theme ...
so now lets see what vrms thinks of my webbook
alan@webbook:~$ vrms
No non-free or contrib packages installed on webbook! rms would be proud.
Excellent, and it even boots up still!
Now I am going to spoil it all by putting Flash back on.
It is worth noting that this might not fully meet the standards of the real rms, and there are projects like gNewSense which try a lot harder to get to pure Software Freedom than I can be bothered to do. I had the simple objective of getting to an empty vrms output starting from a standard Intrepid desktop install and it turned out to be easier than I expected.
