Remove non-free software on your system Using vrms (Virtual Richard M. Stallman)
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Future versions of vrms will include an option to also display text from the public writings of RMS and others that explain why use of each of the installed non-free packages might cause moral issues for some in the Free Software community. This functionality is not yet included.
Install vrms in ubuntu
sudo apt-get install vrms
This will complete the installation at the time of installation you should see the following message
An invocation of vrms has been added to the set of cron jobs run on a monthly basis, so that you will get a periodic reminder of non-free packages which are installed on your system.
if you want to run manually use the following command
vrms
Does that mean that vrms will remove the nvidia graphics driver??? Am confused
It will not remove anything. VRMS will just inform you how many non-free packages are installed in your system.
I don’t understand what is all about. What is the problem? Why you don’t want to use proprietary drivers on linux systems? I don’t mind if my desktop is driven by proprietary driver – I use nvidia graphics cards and had no problems with them, the only problem I had, that kernel/x.org developers made it difficult to install drivers on newer versions of kernel/x.org… shame on you guys!
In response to megaloman:
Simply said, non-free software, or even closed source software like nvidia 3d drivers, are responsible for lots of headaches in the open source world.
Example: An important point in open source is portability. Binary code cannot be used on foreign systems. Linux ATI drivers cannot and will probably never support newer ATI graphics cards on PowerPC Macs. Result: 2D only for Ubuntu on PowerBook.
Another example: Qmail has a restrictive license which forbids binary distribution, thus making it non-free, though open source. So you need to compile it yourself, personally, to use it.
That’s the problem.
Yeah for me the problem is – what if there is a bug that the company hasn’t fixed and doesn’t look like it will fix in a long time? what if there is a feature you really need and you know it is simple to add but the company won’t? what if the company drops the project or goes out of business? what if the software is doing things it shouldn’t be doing (i.e., spyware)?
That said, with things like nvidia drivers or printing pdfs (using acroread instead of evince), I use the propietary because they work the best. But with programming for example, I stopped using proprietary options like realbasic (on the mac) and microsoft .net (I have used mono instead). Also now I am going back to doing more java development. It will be nice to see more java stuff integrated into ubuntu now that java and netbeans and other related things are GPL.