I run an Ubuntu desktop as a VMWare virtual machine client.
The linux-modules-extra-${VERSION}-generic package contains several critical VMWare drivers (vmwgfx, vmw_vmci, vmw_vsock), so I need to keep it installed and updated.
Since it is a virtual machine, there is no need to install packages such as linux-firmware (761MB uncompressed). I would prefer to remove linux-firmware to reduce disk space and bandwidth usage, but linux-image-generic depends on it.
I would remove linux-image-generic and rely on linux-image-virtual, but linux-image-virtual does not depend on linux-modules-extra-${VERSION}-generic, and there is no linux-modules-extra-generic metapackage. I would have to manually install linux-modules-extra-${VERSION}-generic every time I update the kernel.
There are already linux-modules-extra-aws, linux-modules-extra-gcp and linux-modules-extra-gke metapackages which fulfill the same purpose for their respective linux-modules-extra-${VERSION}-xxx packages. It would be very helpful to me (and, I'm sure, many others) to complete the set with a linux-modules-extra-generic metapackage that would depend on the latest linux-modules-extra-${VERSION}-generic.
Kernel: Ubuntu 5.13.0- 28.31-generic 5.13.19
Distribution: Ubuntu 21.10 (impish)
I run an Ubuntu desktop as a VMWare virtual machine client.
The linux-modules- extra-$ {VERSION} -generic package contains several critical VMWare drivers (vmwgfx, vmw_vmci, vmw_vsock), so I need to keep it installed and updated.
Since it is a virtual machine, there is no need to install packages such as linux-firmware (761MB uncompressed). I would prefer to remove linux-firmware to reduce disk space and bandwidth usage, but linux-image-generic depends on it.
I would remove linux-image-generic and rely on linux-image- virtual, but linux-image-virtual does not depend on linux-modules- extra-$ {VERSION} -generic, and there is no linux-modules- extra-generic metapackage. I would have to manually install linux-modules- extra-$ {VERSION} -generic every time I update the kernel.
There are already linux-modules- extra-aws, linux-modules- extra-gcp and linux-modules- extra-gke metapackages which fulfill the same purpose for their respective linux-modules- extra-$ {VERSION} -xxx packages. It would be very helpful to me (and, I'm sure, many others) to complete the set with a linux-modules- extra-generic metapackage that would depend on the latest linux-modules- extra-$ {VERSION} -generic.
Thank you for your consideration.