Is it possible to disable installation of non-free or proprietary softwares and applications in Ubuntu?
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2 Answers
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Tell them don't install non-free softwares. If this doesn't work, try:
Create user group
powerusers
, users in this group can only install certain type of softwres.# addgroup powerusers
Edit
/etc/sudoers
, grantpowerusers
the privilege tosudo apt-get
only:%powerusers ALL = (ALL) /usr/bin/apt-get
Now, users in
powerusers
group can only sudoapt-get ...
, but can notsudo dpkg -i <downloaded.deb>
, or edit file/etc/apt/sources.list
. Only you can determine which sources to include.Remove
non-free
,restricted
,multiverse
sources fromsources.list
files.
Done!

Lenik
- 10,398
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1They can still install proprietary software in their home directories from binary installers or from source (some proprietary software does distribute source, just restricts what you can do with it too much to be FOSS). I'm guessing the OP just wants to know how to give a user some restricted administrative abilities, though, and for that this answer should work. – Eliah Kagan May 26 '12 at 02:36
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2I don't think an app residing in the user's home dir can really count as being installed at all. – Mark Paskal May 26 '12 at 06:19
1
It is technically impossible!
Since the IQ level of a computer is zero, it can't detect whether the software running on it is free software or not. The only one thing you can do is advise users to use free software only. :-)
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2I'm surprised the IQ level of computer is zero. I had overestimated its IQ for a long time. – Lenik May 26 '12 at 04:05
sudo
, which would let them modify allowed software sources. I believe either /etc/sudoers or AppArmor will hold the ideal answer, and have tagged this as such. – Jjed May 22 '12 at 07:38restricted
andmultiverse
software sources in the first place. But after that it will be tricky, since you'll have to stop people from installing certain software (that is not only by apt and PPA but by downloading or compiling themselves). So giving users no right to install software might come closest because you'll have a very hard time trying to makeapt
/dpkg
/make
etc. figure out whether software is free (and therefore allowed to be installed) or not. – moewe May 22 '12 at 10:37