Ruby comes with some gems bundled (default gems), they are not supposed to be uninstalled, and if you do uninstall them, an error is given:

[[email protected] ~]$ gem uninstall json
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::InstallError)
    gem "json" cannot be uninstalled because it is a default gem

Find out whether a gem is a default one

Fortunately, RubyGems can tell whether a gem is a default one from v2.0.0 on. (See commit)

gem list -d

The above command lists the locally installed gems with detailed information.

Default gems are marked with (default) in Installed at lines.

For example, an user installed gem jekyll and a default gem json:

jekyll (3.1.2)
    Author: Tom Preston-Werner
    Homepage: https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll
    License: MIT
    Installed at: /home/zzz.buzz/.gem/ruby/2.3.0

    A simple, blog aware, static site generator.

json (1.8.3)
    Author:
    Installed at (default): /usr/lib/ruby/gems/2.3.0

    This json is bundled with Ruby

From RubyGems v2.6.3 (2016-04-05) on, output of gem list (without the -d option) marks default gems as well. (See related PR & issue)

Here is an example output:

bigdecimal (default: 1.2.8)
bundler (1.11.2)

List of the Default Gems

Here is a list of default gems, aka gems bundled with ruby.

bigdecimal
io-console
json
psych
rdoc

Uninstall all but default gems

If you ever want to uninstall all but default gems, use

gem list | cut -d' ' -f1  | grep -Ev 'bigdecimal|io-console|json|psych|rdoc' | xargs gem uninstall -aIx

Or follow this gist: gem-reset.

Reference:

Update RubyGems

RubyGems Basics:

The gem command allows you to interact with RubyGems.

Ruby 1.9 and newer ships with RubyGems.

To update rubygems

gem update --system

Install RubyGems

If you are using ruby with version lower than 1.9, you can install RubyGems manually.

To install rubygems, run command like

sudo apt-get install rubygems

or follow the instruction on https://rubygems.org/pages/download