Create linux-modules-extra-generic metapackage

[Clement Cherlin]

Greetings, all.

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.

I created https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1960633/
and was told that this is a better place than Launchpad to discuss new
packages.

Thank you for your consideration.

Cheers,
Clement Cherlin