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How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-15 19:36
by Head_on_a_Stick
One of the reasons I like to use Debian is because of their clear stance in respect of non-free software[1], I really appreciate the ability to separate out the "bad" software when I can and at least be aware of the stuff that I actually need.[2]

So I am wondering if anybody else here feels the same way because it seems that this is a complete non-issue for most members.

I am hoping that I am mistaken in this :)

Test your system with:

Code: Select all

# apt install vrms
vrms
This will provide a list of any packages installed from the contrib or non-free components of the Debian repositories.

Thanks in advance to any who participate!

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianSoftware# ... s_Flash.29

[2] All my wireless cards need non-free firmware, as do my Intel CPUs.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-15 20:17
by GarryRicketson
Still using Debian 7 here,

Code: Select all

$vrms
No non-free or contrib packages installed on debian!  rms would be proud.
$

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-15 21:00
by NFT5
It looks like I fall into the "baddie" category, but I really do try to keep non-free and contrib to a minimum, installing only what I really need.

Code: Select all

chris@BOSSDESK:~$ vrms
              Non-free packages installed on BOSSDESK

adobe-flashplugin                   Adobe Flash Player plugin
firmware-realtek                    Binary firmware for Realtek wired and wireless network

              Contrib packages installed on BOSSDESK

ttf-mscorefonts-installer           Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts
virtualbox-5.2                      Oracle VM VirtualBox

  2 non-free packages, 0.1% of 2048 installed packages.
  2 contrib packages, 0.1% of 2048 installed packages.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-15 21:41
by Cyborg
24 non-free packages, 1.0% of 2319 installed packages.
8 contrib packages, 0.3% of 2319 installed packages.
Most of those 24 non-free packages are nvidia-something, and I don't even have an NVIDIA card... could I safely uninstall them?

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 04:32
by Head_on_a_Stick
Cyborg wrote:Most of those 24 non-free packages are nvidia-something, and I don't even have an NVIDIA card... could I safely uninstall them?
Sounds like it, yes.

Try this to cleanse your system:

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# apt purge $(vrms -s)

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 04:39
by cds60601

Code: Select all

mars:~/Docs# vrms
                Non-free packages installed on mars

firmware-misc-nonfree               Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kerne
firmware-realtek                    Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT adapters

  2 non-free packages, 0.1% of 1812 installed packages.
mars:~/Docs# 


Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 04:42
by Bulkley

Code: Select all

~$ vrms
              Non-free packages installed on mycomputer

amd64-microcode                     Processor microcode firmware for AMD CPUs
firmware-amd-graphics               Binary firmware for AMD/ATI graphics chips
firmware-linux-nonfree              Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kerne
firmware-misc-nonfree               Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kerne
firmware-realtek                    Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT adapters
intel-microcode                     Processor microcode firmware for Intel CPUs

               Contrib packages installed on mycomputer

iucode-tool                         Intel processor microcode tool

  6 non-free packages, 0.3% of 1843 installed packages.
  1 contrib packages, 0.1% of 1843 installed packages.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 05:51
by roseway
38 non-free packages, 1.5% of 2558 installed packages.
11 contrib packages, 0.4% of 2558 installed packages.

Mainly nVidia-related packages, plus intel-microcode and firmware-realtek. I've got some other, probably unneeded, firmware packages which I could prune, but there seems little point.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 07:08
by kedaha
Head_on_a_Stick wrote: [...]it seems that this is a complete non-issue for most members.
I am hoping that I am mistaken in this :)

Code: Select all

$vrms
No non-free or contrib packages installed on debian!  rms would be proud.
Free software is the single, most important issue for this member and I'm hoping that I'm not in a minority.
My system is 100% free. :D
I wish I could say the same about my mobile phone. :(

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 08:50
by oswaldkelso
I've had no broadband for 5 weeks, graphics card died on the desktop and last week the battery on my main laptop. I'd installed MX16 on my sons netbook a while back and still had the CD so I dug out my old Acer Aspire 5315 to have something to hotspot off my not so free phone! Not sure if I'd call it Debian but it seems mostly jessie, I'd not call it MX16 either though. :-) I removed all the non-free and contrib and installed linux-libre built fittstool and installed windowmaker and tint2. Quite interesting to see the differences between my Dragora systems, the good and the bad. I have no GTK3 or QT5 on my Dragora systems, and package ages vary from mostly much older to several much newer as I tend to build from sid sources or upstream. The same/similar desktop is using <50MB on the desktop and <70MN on my laptop. I guess that's why the great disparity? Security is great on Debian and with all work going into Dragora3 if you run D2 your pretty much on your own.

I always liked the Debian way of separation of main, contrib and non-free it made it easy to remove the packages I didn't need on a laptop I knew ran free-software. That said I believe most people just pay lip service to it's original purpose of using contrib and non-free as a last resort to get X, sound, or wifi and adding contrib and non-free to your sources.list is now sadly the defacto standard.

Private + Shared = RAM used Program

164.0 KiB + 52.0 KiB = 216.0 KiB gnome-pty-helper
184.0 KiB + 36.5 KiB = 220.5 KiB anacron
192.0 KiB + 40.0 KiB = 232.0 KiB acpid
200.0 KiB + 41.0 KiB = 241.0 KiB atd
208.0 KiB + 45.5 KiB = 253.5 KiB acpi_fakekeyd
272.0 KiB + 63.5 KiB = 335.5 KiB init
236.0 KiB + 151.0 KiB = 387.0 KiB fittstool
320.0 KiB + 111.0 KiB = 431.0 KiB cron
480.0 KiB + 98.5 KiB = 578.5 KiB cgmanager
528.0 KiB + 51.5 KiB = 579.5 KiB rpc.idmapd
564.0 KiB + 24.5 KiB = 588.5 KiB ssh-agent
460.0 KiB + 227.0 KiB = 687.0 KiB rpcbind
500.0 KiB + 352.5 KiB = 852.5 KiB su
656.0 KiB + 222.0 KiB = 878.0 KiB rpc.statd
616.0 KiB + 302.0 KiB = 918.0 KiB dbus-launch (2)
824.0 KiB + 106.0 KiB = 930.0 KiB systemd-logind
344.0 KiB + 624.5 KiB = 968.5 KiB avahi-daemon (2)
1.1 MiB + 152.5 KiB = 1.2 MiB sshd
1.1 MiB + 185.5 KiB = 1.3 MiB bluetoothd
872.0 KiB + 472.0 KiB = 1.3 MiB getty (6)
1.2 MiB + 402.5 KiB = 1.6 MiB ntpd
984.0 KiB + 668.5 KiB = 1.6 MiB gvfsd
1.5 MiB + 95.0 KiB = 1.6 MiB rsyslogd
1.6 MiB + 105.0 KiB = 1.7 MiB udevd
960.0 KiB + 1.0 MiB = 2.0 MiB cups-browsed
1.3 MiB + 724.0 KiB = 2.1 MiB dbus-daemon (3)
1.2 MiB + 956.0 KiB = 2.2 MiB gvfsd-fuse
2.0 MiB + 244.5 KiB = 2.2 MiB wpa_supplicant
1.5 MiB + 1.0 MiB = 2.5 MiB cupsd
3.2 MiB + 36.0 KiB = 3.2 MiB haveged
2.6 MiB + 1.9 MiB = 4.5 MiB tint2
2.4 MiB + 2.2 MiB = 4.6 MiB lightdm (2)
3.8 MiB + 1.3 MiB = 5.1 MiB bash (2)
4.2 MiB + 2.1 MiB = 6.3 MiB wmaker (2)
6.1 MiB + 780.0 KiB = 6.8 MiB pulseaudio
7.4 MiB + 38.0 KiB = 7.4 MiB dhclient
6.7 MiB + 1.6 MiB = 8.4 MiB wicd-monitor
4.3 MiB + 4.6 MiB = 8.8 MiB lilyterm
8.5 MiB + 1.1 MiB = 9.6 MiB wicd
17.3 MiB + 1.1 MiB = 18.4 MiB Xorg
18.4 MiB + 6.7 MiB = 25.1 MiB wicd-client
---------------------------------
138.7 MiB
=================================
Linux mx1 4.17.6-gnu #1 SMP Wed Jul 11 18:57:38 UTC 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux

No non-free or contrib packages installed on mx1! rms would be proud.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 12:37
by Zjho
As a relatively new member and one who appeared to need contrib / non-free to get display resolution correct at onset i automadically selected that option in poll only to discover system jumped vrms hurdle clean.
Any loyalty here is more about not wanting to bork atop of what gnome/pebkac already does.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 13:31
by CwF
I can't give a straight vote here since my system is blurred. The hypervisor is 100% free by design. The VMs are allowed to be anything up to 100% contaminated, by design...

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 16:02
by Wheelerof4te
Of the non-free stuff, I have installed

Code: Select all

intel-microcode
firmware-amd-graphics
firmware-realtek
broadcom-sta-dkms
Viber
Everything else is free.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 18:09
by HuangLao

Code: Select all

firmware-amd-graphics              
  1 non-free packages, 0.1% of 1618 installed packages.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-16 20:25
by Head_on_a_Stick
NFT5 wrote:I fall into the "baddie" category
There are no baddies here, just victims :cry:
oswaldkelso wrote:I always liked the Debian way of separation of main, contrib and non-free it made it easy to remove the packages I didn't need on a laptop I knew ran free-software. That said I believe most people just pay lip service to it's original purpose of using contrib and non-free as a last resort to get X, sound, or wifi and adding contrib and non-free to your sources.list is now sadly the defacto standard.
Yes, unfortunately the battle for free hardware isn't going well with almost all wireless cards now requiring non-free firmware and Intel joining AMD in needing blobs for their video cards, there is also the fact that non-free firmware may be present in apparently "clean" devices if it was inserted at the point of manufacture rather than loaded from the operating system.

Fortunately, Debian already has a RISC-V port :)

https://wiki.debian.org/RISC-V

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-17 04:32
by RU55EL
Not too bad...

Code: Select all

russel@NUC-BR:~$ vrms

               Contrib packages installed on NUC-BR

torbrowser-launcher                 helps download and run the Tor Browser Bundle

  1 contrib packages, 0.1% of 1591 installed packages.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-17 12:23
by kingocounty
Clean bill of health here! I just purchased a new (refurbed) desktop and did my research to make sure all the hardware was FOSS compatible.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-19 18:29
by None1975
My system is completely free, vrms-compliant.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-20 00:52
by crackerjack
I only have the intel microcode installed. Seems to be necessary to have.

Re: How free is your Debian system?

Posted: 2018-07-20 23:17
by CwF
crackerjack wrote:I only have the intel microcode installed. Seems to be necessary to have.
...perhaps on some, or with intel video. Since I don't even have vrms installed I checked, not needed my intel E5.