07.16.13
Gemini version available ♊︎Latest Debian GNU/Linux Installs Gnote When Mono is Removed
Summary: Interesting decision from Debian developers/packagers, who help those that reject and eject Mono
It has been a while since we last wrote about Mono, the Microsoft tyrant inside GNU/Linux. Tomboy continues to be a leading Mono promotion tool even though a superior substitute (faster and smaller) written in C++ exists and is freely available without the Microsoft patent risk.
One contributor of ours said: “when I uninstalled ‘mono-runtime’ it removed a bunch of mono stuff. Then it continued on to install gnote, something I had not requested.
“I’m wondering what went wrong with the Debian team that they allowed Mono in there at all.”
“Debian should be made clean again,” he added. “It used to be the distro that was most about Freedom. I guess that crown has now moved to Trisquel and Gnewsense instead.
“Below is a capture from the terminal of a freshly installed Debian 7.1 (Wheezy) system. I used the debian-7.0.0-i386-netinst.iso image from their web site. I’ll keep a snapshot of that VM around for a day so if more is needed.”
Here is the terminal output:
root@debian ~# lsb_release -rd Description: Debian GNU/Linux 7.1 (wheezy) Release: 7.1 root@debian:~# dpkg -l mono* Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-==============-============-============-================================= un mono-1.0-runti(no description available) un mono-2.0-runti (no description available) ii mono-4.0-gac 2.10.8.1-8 all Mono GAC tool (for CLI 4.0) un mono-common (no description available) ii mono-gac 2.10.8.1-8 all Mono GAC tool un mono-jit (no description available) ii mono-runtime 2.10.8.1-8 i386 Mono runtime un monodoc-gtk2.0 (no description available) root@debian:~# dpkg -l gnote Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Architecture Description +++-==============-============-============-================================= un gnote (no description available) root@debian:~# apt-get -y remove mono-runtime Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: gnote libpcrecpp0 The following packages will be REMOVED: gnome libdbus-glib1.0-cil libdbus1.0-cil libgconf2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libgmime2.6-cil libgtk2.0-cil libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo4.0-cil libmono-corlib4.0-cil libmono-i18n-west4.0-cil libmono-i18n4.0-cil libmono-posix4.0-cil libmono-security4.0-cil libmono-sharpzip4.84-cil libmono-system-configuration4.0-cil libmono-system-core4.0-cil libmono-system-drawing4.0-cil libmono-system-security4.0-cil libmono-system-xml4.0-cil libmono-system4.0-cil mono-4.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime tomboy The following NEW packages will be installed: gnote libpcrecpp0 0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 26 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 3,421 kB of archives. After this operation, 20.8 MB disk space will be freed. Get:1 http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/main libpcrecpp0 i386 1:8.30-5 [126 kB] Get:2 http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/main gnote i386 0.8.3-1 [3,295 kB] Fetched 3,421 kB in 6s (561 kB/s) (Reading database ... 143081 files and directories currently installed.) Removing gnome ... Removing tomboy ... Removing libdbus-glib1.0-cil ... Removing libdbus-glib1.0-cil from Mono Removing libdbus1.0-cil ... Removing libdbus1.0-cil from Mono Removing libgconf2.0-cil ... Removing libgconf2.0-cil from Mono Removing libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil ... Removing libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil from Mono Removing libgtk2.0-cil ... Removing libgtk2.0-cil from Mono Removing libgmime2.6-cil ... Removing libgmime2.6-cil from Mono Removing libglib2.0-cil ... Removing libglib2.0-cil from Mono Removing libmono-addins0.2-cil ... Removing libmono-addins0.2-cil from Mono Removing libmono-cairo4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-system-drawing4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-system-core4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-sharpzip4.84-cil ... Removing libmono-posix4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-i18n-west4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-i18n4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-system4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-system-configuration4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-system-security4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-system-xml4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-security4.0-cil ... Removing libmono-corlib4.0-cil ... Removing mono-runtime ... Removing mono-gac ... * Removing packages from mono Removing mono-4.0-gac ... Processing triggers for gconf2 ... Processing triggers for shared-mime-info ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for menu ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Selecting previously unselected package libpcrecpp0:i386. (Reading database ... 141636 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking libpcrecpp0:i386 (from .../libpcrecpp0_1%3a8.30-5_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package gnote. Unpacking gnote (from .../gnote_0.8.3-1_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for libglib2.0-0:i386 ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus ... Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme ... Setting up libpcrecpp0:i386 (1:8.30-5) ... Setting up gnote (0.8.3-1) ...
“They could have saved all that trouble, space and bandwidth by going with Gnote to begin with,” he added. “Even just looking at the volume of dependencies it is superior.”
This whole exploration started because as a Debian user myself I just noticed that Mono is included in the desktop by default. Nobody really needs it; this is only taking up a lot of valuable space and raises various types of risk. █
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