25 thoughts on “Are you a 100% free user ?”

1. Pingback: Nizar Kerkeni (nizarus) 's status on Wednesday, 09-Sep-09 23:48:57 UTC - Identi.ca

2. Most of those make sense, but why are the (non-restricted) kernel packages considered problematic?

   1. Sincerely !! I don’t know :/

      1. Those are just metapackages to make sure you get l-r-m when you update. Remove away!

         My vrms output for at least a year was « There are no non-free packages installed on this system. RMS would be proud! » but I installed Adobe Flash last week and screwed it up. I now have 1 non-free package.

   2. Just keep linux-image-generic (which will always depend on the latest free kernel image).
      Remove linux-generic, since it depends on that, but adds restricted-modules.

3. I think I’m going to go burn a couple nVidia driver CDs in effigy.

   1. Blast, I always forget about gravatar when I do that kind of thing.

      1. Don’t worry I don’t think that RMS is reading my modest blog 🙂 He have more interesting things to do 😀

4. And actually, the very first piece of code that EVER runs on your machine, the code that’s running the entire time your machine is ever on, the code you don’t have any Free replacement for, that adds 5 seconds to your boot time all by ITSELF… isn’t even detected by your little tool.

   Proprietary BIOS.

   1. Yes 🙂
      That’s why a free bios project was born http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html

5. Have you considered the free option of unrar? (unrar-free)

   (although, if you need to open unrar 3.0 packages then you may need to keep the old one)

   1. When I need to extract rar files I use the unrar-free. If unrar-free does not extract the file, I simply remove the rar file.

6. Why the heck is tangerine-icon-theme non-free I thought at first. Then I took a look at /usr/share/doc/tangerine-icon-theme/copyright which led me to http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/trademarkpolicy

7. hahaha nice post!

   # vrms

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

8. Nice post. If you just want a lower percentage, you could cheat and install a whole bunch of free packages. There seems to be enough to choose from in the repositories 🙂
   It won’t remove non free packages, but it will change your percentage to the better…

   oh, and I’m not doing to well myself:
   19 non-free packages, 1.3% of 1483 installed packages.
   5 contrib packages, 0.3% of 1483 installed packages.

   Maybe I should go (non-free) package hunting when I have a minute and make sure I really need all those packages.

   Cheers

9. But would rms come out as 100% clean? I have gdb-doc installed which is marked as non-free but maybe he doesn’t need to consult the manual.

   (otherwise I’m 1.1% of 1823)

10. @Jussi : I haven’t used him, and I’m using rar archives rarely (rar and rarely 🙂 ) so I can remove.
    @silwol : According to this page https://launchpad.net/tangerine-icon-theme the licence is not specified.
    @Isart Montane : great the first really free user here 🙂 what is your distribution ??
    @Søren : sure we can 🙂
    @Robert : why not :/

11. I wouldn’t rely on vrms as it gives you strange results.
    An icon theme has no reason to be GPL’d and I’m really fine with the current Creative Commons licence.

    nvidia modalias packages are just a bunch of textfiles with graphic cards identifiers so that Ubuntu knows which driver to install. I don’t see any closed source binaries in them …

    On more complete installations I’ve seen some complete nonsense from vrms, pointing out some packages that are completely free.

    In a FSF point of view the Linux kernel (the pristine kernel.org version) is non-free. It contains a few closed source firmwares, which is pretty much the same than a onboard ROM expect the latter can’t be upgraded.

12. I would put no faith whatsoever on vrms. It is out of date, inaccurate and was written for Debian not Ubuntu.

    Yes, Ubuntu is derived from Debian unstable, but that alone along with whatever changes Ubuntu makes shows that vrms is a waste of time.

    Also, is your aim to « make Richard Stallman proud », or to have a free operating system?

    I’m not sure what it would take to make RMS proud, heck I’ve never even met the guy and I’m a little uncomfortable about some scripters taking his name and ascribing emotions to him in this way.

    What I do know is his writing, and in that he unequivocal. Software freedom is not a matter of degrees (like you can’t just be a little bit pregnant), but also that the Free Software movement is a political movement in which political arguments need to be won, not merely the technical challenges.

    The best way to start learning about Free Software is to have a look at the Free Software Foundation website and the GNU Foundation website, read, learn and start founding your own decisions upon how important you feel the ideals of the Free Software movement are (and the dangers from proprietary software) rather than the unreliable vrms script.

13. eh in gNewSense we removed vrms
    – it is wrong in certain cases – its logic is wrong and eh that means it is wrong 😉

    1. gNewSense is approved by RMS him self, so no need to the virtual one 🙂

14. Linux appears as nonfree because of the nonfree blobs it has. Instead of Linux you can use Linux-libre.

    Also, like Ompaul said, vrms is not accurate at all.

15. Pingback: Links 11/09/2009: Unbundling Petition in the EU, G:Noblin 3.0 Released | Boycott Novell

16. Non-free packages installed on TheBoss-PC

    linux-generic Complete Generic Linux kernel
    linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.28 modules helper script
    linux-restricted-modules- Restricted Linux modules for generic kernels
    nvidia-173-modaliases Modaliases for the NVIDIA binary X.Org driver
    nvidia-180-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
    rar Archiver for .rar files

    Contrib packages installed on TheBoss-PC

    flashplugin-installer Adobe Flash Player plugin installer
    jetty Java servlet engine and webserver
    nvidia-common Find obsolete NVIDIA drivers
    ttf-mscorefonts-installer Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts

    8 non-free packages, 0.6% of 1274 installed packages.
    4 contrib packages, 0.3% of 1274 installed packages.

17. I discover the unrar-free package that replace the non free one.
    enjoy !!

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