Ubuntu
linux package

  1. Impish (21.10)
  2. Bug #1960633
  3. Comment #0

Comment 0 for bug 1960633

Revision history for this message
Clement Cherlin (mooninaut) wrote : Create linux-modules-extra-generic metapackage

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.