DebAWeek: vrms

Every computer needs a vrms, that is, a virtual Richard M. Stallman. This package tells you what packages installed on your computer are not licensed under a free software license. This is extremely useful information even if you don’t make any changes to your system because of it. I also think it’s good to strive for a totally free system, though I imagine it will still be a while before I ever get there.

This is one of the simplest packages to use; just run:

vrms

A list of non-free packages will be displayed with a short description of each followed by a summary. My summary at the moment reads:

11 non-free packages, 0.7% of 1493 installed packages.

And that was an improvement from the first time I ran vrms in which I had something like 1.1%. I was able to go through and remove some of the non-free packages I no longer needed. After the upgrade to Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) I will re-evaluate whether I still need Sun’s java packages or whether the free software java implementations will be sufficient. If so that should drop me to 9 packages. Most of the rest of the packages are related to hardware where suitable free software drivers are not yet available. But someday, with the hard work being done, I will have a totally free software system.