Ever had a question about Linux but felt too afraid to ask? Well now’s your chance, ask any question about Linux, no matter how noob or repeated it is, and I and others will help answer them.
Previous noob question thread: https://lemmy.ml/post/14261893
Is there a way to assess which packages on my linux distribution aren’t open source? I’m planning on having a secondary machine which is exclusively open source, but not sure how I would go about ensuring that is the case.
This would depend on the distro you use. Most distros will require you to enable a non-free repository before you can install anything that isn’t Foss or open source from the official repos. You could also use an FSF approved distro. Keep in mind, the FSF will only approve distros that don’t include any non-free anything in the official repos. Besides that, you just have to know the licensing before you install it.
The language you want is “nonfree” in Debian derivatives.
Depends on the distribution, many package managers can filter by license. So you can find anything that doesn’t have an open source license.
Depends on the distro. Some have a configuration setting to allow unfree software or not, others have separate repos.