☩ Walking in Light with Christ – Faith, Computing, Diary

If you want to be strict on using only Free Software (in a as in freedom sense), just like Richard Stallman. You will be happy to know there is a tool in Linux called Virtual Richard Stallman ( vrms – report of installed non-free software ) 🙂

On launch vrms simply lists, all software and software documentation installed on Debian GNU / Linux  that is not 100% free software licenses / GPL compatbile. This is software installed via non-free  package Debian repositories or somehow not sticking to the standards of Debian Free Software Guidelines. Of course living with 100% free software is only for the hard core free software evangelists and rarely there is someone who can use computer on daily basis without some bits of proprietary software like flashplugin-nonfree, Skype rar, unrar. I tried for a while living on only 100% free software but didn't succeeded cause some non-free software is still a must to be able to not detach from "Digital Society". Living on only free software is not easy especially if you want to have normal multimedia  stuff on Desktop. Anyways even if you don't plan to purge your non-free software vrms is useful to list what free-software is installed on PC.

noah:~# apt-cache show vrms|grep -i description


Description-en: virtual Richard M. Stallman
 The vrms program will analyze the set of currently-installed packages
 on a Debian-based system, and report all of the packages from the
 non-free and contrib trees which are currently installed.
 .
—

Install vmrs with:

noah:~# apt-get install --yes vrms


Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information… Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  liboggkate1 xulrunner-10.0
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  vrms
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 101 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/13.0 kB of archives.
After this operation, 102 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Retrieving bug reports… Done
Parsing Found/Fixed information… Done
Selecting previously unselected package vrms.
(Reading database … 226672 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking vrms (from …/apt/archives/vrms_1.16_all.deb) …
Processing triggers for man-db …
Setting up vrms (1.16) …

  Below is a list of all non-free software installed on my Debian 7 Thinkpad:

noah:~# vrms


                Non-free packages installed on noah

acroread                            Adobe Acrobat Reader: Portable Document Format file vi
acroread-data                       data files for acroread
acroread-dictionary-en              English dictionary for for acroread
acroread-escript                    Adobe EScript Plug-In
acroread-l10n-en                    English language package for acroread
firmware-iwlwifi                    Binary firmware for Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 and 802.11
frogatto-data                       2D platformer game starring a quixotic frog
mame                                Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME)
mame-tools                          Tools for MAME and MESS
mess                                Multi Emulator Super System (MESS)
mess-data                           Data files for the Multi Emulator Super System (MESS)
mozilla-acroread                    Adobe Acrobat(R) Reader plugin for mozilla / konqueror
nikto                               web server security scanner
opera                               Fast and secure web browser and Internet suite
rar                                 Archiver for .rar files
skype                               Skype
teamviewer                          TeamViewer (Remote Control Application)
unrar                               Unarchiver for .rar files (non-free version)
xmame-tools                         Transitional package for mame-tools

                Contrib packages installed on noah

cbedic                              Text-mode Bulgarian/English Dictionary
dosemu                              DOS Emulator for Linux
flashplugin-nonfree                 Adobe Flash Player – browser plugin
frogatto                            2D platformer game starring a quixotic frog
gnome-video-arcade                  Simple MAME frontend
mess-desktop-entries                Desktop entries for MESS ROMs
ttf-mscorefonts-installer           Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts
winetricks                          package manager for WINE to install software easily

     Contrib packages with status other than installed on noah

gxmame                              ( dei)  GTK XMame frontend

  19 non-free packages, 0.8% of 2531 installed packages.
  9 contrib packages, 0.4% of 2531 installed packages.

 

If you want to go the Stallman way and be a 100% Free Software user, Go free and purge all "evil" non-free software  🙂 issue:

# for i in $(vrms -q|grep -v 'Contrib packages'|grep -v 'Non-free'|awk '{ print $1 }' | awk 'NF'); \
do \
apt-get remove --yes $i; dpkg --purge $i; done