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.
PRINTER ERROR MESSAGE: CAN ANYONE HELP?
Hi Alan (and everyone),
At long last I tried to connect my HP Deskjet D1470 printer to my webbook this evening. At first everything seemed okay. A printer icon popped up as expected, asking me to proceed with the configuration. However, the test page didn’t print at all, although the printer did initially draw in a sheet of paper in readiness. When I restarted my webbook with the printer connected the following error message popped up on the left hand side of the top panel:
Printer Error
Printer ‘Deskjet_D1400_Series: ‘Other’
A red circle with a white horizontal bar across it has also appeared in front of the printer icon.
Can anyone tell me what this means?
POSTSCRIPT:
Running the PRINTING TROUBLESHOOTER produced the following:
Sorry!
I have not been able to work out what the problem is, but I have collected some useful information to put in a bug report [!]
Page 1 (Choose printer):
{‘cups_dest’: ,
‘cups_instance’: None,
‘cups_queue’: ‘Deskjet_D1400_series’,
‘cups_queue_listed’: True}
Page 2 (Check printer sanity):
{‘cups_device_uri_scheme’: u’hp’,
‘cups_printer_dict’: {‘device-uri’: u’hp:/usb/Deskjet_D1400_series?serial=TH82C2213Y053T’,
‘printer-info’: u’HP Deskjet D1400 series’,
‘printer-is-shared’: True,
‘printer-location’: u”,
‘printer-make-and-model’: u’HP DeskJet D1400 Foomatic/hpijs, hpijs 2.8.2′,
‘printer-state’: 3,
‘printer-state-message’: u”,
‘printer-state-reasons’: [u'other'],
‘printer-type’: 135180,
‘printer-uri-supported’: u’ipp://localhost:631/printers/Deskjet_D1400_series’},
‘is_cups_class’: False}
Page 3 (Printer state reasons):
{‘printer-state-message’: ”, ‘printer-state-reasons’: ‘other’}
Page 4 (Print test page):
{‘test_page_attempted’: True,
‘test_page_job_id’: [3],
‘test_page_job_status’: [(3, 'Deskjet_D1400_series', 'Test Page')],
‘test_page_successful’: False}
Evening Alan, was just wondering if it would be possible to re-jig the key layout, more specifically to swap the ‘Fn’ and ‘Ctrl’ keys as it’s now starting to get annoying when i’m so used to having the Ctrl as the furthest right key. Would this need an edit at a root-ish menu or a simple Key layout map change?
And while we’re on random questions, any news on the graphics drivers (to work with Intrepid)?
Printer Problem Resolved!
My brother, who has had several HP printers, came up from London yesterday and he managed to get my printer working within minutes.
It seems the failure to print was due to the vagaries of a rather flimsy printer (HP Deskjet D1470) in combination with my inexperience and had nothing to do with Ubuntu!
Switching on the printer before plugging it into the computer as described in the Printer Setup Guide was apparently not the correct way to proceed. My brother’s preferred sequence was to plug in the printer, switch on the computer and then switch on the printer (though switching on the printer before the computer has the advantage of making a printer icon appear on the top panel.)
The webbook is my first computer, replacing a faithful old word processor with a built-in printer (though I have used Microsoft Office at work for some years), so many things that others take completely for granted are new to me. I am afraid you will all have to bear with me….
By the way, I would have posted my printer query under Webbook FAQ (31.10.08) were it not for the fact that comments posted in older sections tend to get overlooked by everyone except Alan….
excellent! glad you got it working with help from your brother. I get emails when comments are left, if you register on the site you can see a list of comments in date order. I would like some better way of bringing comments on older articles to more general view.
Silly question, but how do I register on the site?
Apropos nothing in particular, except I thought people might be amused, The Economist (no less) advocates purchasing Linux netbooks rather than wasting money on Windows ones, in this little article (from /.)
http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12673233
They seem to have an inferior brand in mind, but one can’t have everything
Seems since doing the vrms clean up and a few other ones, when ever I turn on my webbook I get the option to chose which type of Linux I want, also seem to have lost a few of the smooth graphics options. Hmmm
Guess I should be more careful with what I remove.
Happy Christmas to Alan
Thanks for your inspirational help
thanks, and happy Christmas to you too.
Sorry – that’s on my to-do list – I’ll go and whack it onto the homepage now!
In the meantime, same as with the WordPress standard, it’s /wp-register.php so http://webbookblog.com/wp-register.php will take you there!
I think I’m working on that now…
Hello there just wondering whether you know of any external usb dvd drives compatible with ubuntu webbook and how I can install it !! Thankyou
well I have been using a Freecom one but I think pretty much anything should work fine. Just plug and play.