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evanescente~ondine

Member

Registered: 2025-09-12

Posts: 33  

how to thin out the system (drivers and modules)

Hi,
I don't have any memory issue or anything, but I thought it would be neat to remove all the unnecessary stuff on my system, starting with needless kernel modules. But I see more than 4 freakin thousands installed but unloaded modules ?
I see zram and zstd for instance, aren't these useful ? What can I remove ?

Last edited by evanescente~ondine (2025-10-20 11:01:53)

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,869  

Re: how to thin out the system (drivers and modules)

Hello:

... zram and zstd ...
... aren't these useful?

Yes, depending on your box and hardware, they can be very useful.

See:
https://wiki.debian.org/ZRam
https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=4800
https://linuxblog.io/running-out-of-ram-linux-add-zram/

What can I remove?

That's a more difficult question which requires some research on your part.

First you need to check and see what modules are being loaded by your system.
Then check if you are actually using them.
Done that, evaluate the convenience of removing them or not.
ie: just what is the upside to doing it.

It is not hard to do: just needs work but you will learn quite a bit in the process.

See:
https://www.tecmint.com/remove-unwanted … rom-linux/

Make sure to search Dev1 on how to unload/remove* modules in a Devuan (sysvinit) system.
Debian (systemd) based installations do it according to how their installation works.

Best,

A.

* do remember to back up your system first and also make notes. ie: log your actions

Last edited by Altoid (2025-10-20 12:14:03)

RedGreen925

Member

Registered: 2024-12-07

Posts: 186  

Re: how to thin out the system (drivers and modules)

I don't have any memory issue or anything,

So for the sake of less than a 100M saving you are going to waste all that time on every kernel upgrade to get rid of them.

 root@9600k:~# du -h /lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64
snip....
40K	/lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64/kernel/sound/firewire/motu
312K	/lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64/kernel/sound/firewire
20K	/lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64/kernel/sound/isa/sb
24K	/lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64/kernel/sound/isa
8.2M	/lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64/kernel/sound
68K	/lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64/kernel/block
102M	/lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64/kernel
107M	/lib/modules/6.12.48+deb13-amd64

The quickest way for you to do this if you want to persist is to start building your own kernels with only the modules needed for your install. That guarantees that you will never have any excess modules loaded. Unless you apply the Debian patches to it it will lack the possible security fixes they do this is solved if you use their source to build the kernel.

Dutch_Master

Member

Registered: 2018-05-31

Posts: 306  

Re: how to thin out the system (drivers and modules)

If you want to de-clutter your system at all, start with a source-based distro, not Devuan nor Debian. Consider Gentoo, Arch, LFS or Slackware. You'll learn a lot but boy that learning curve is steep! :-\

evanescente~ondine

Member

Registered: 2025-09-12

Posts: 33  

Re: how to thin out the system (drivers and modules)

Considering I've never been able to install a desktop BSD or vanilla Arch, I'll pass... Customization is good, but half-made, buggy 15 years old systems are not.

Last edited by evanescente~ondine (2025-10-20 14:28:52)