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Scott Ritchie
Asked: 2012-08-16 18:35:37 +0800 CST

How do I list uninstalled but recommended packages?

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How do I list the packages that are recommended by my current set of installed packages, but for whatever reason weren't installed?

apt

2 Answers

  1. This can sometimes happen if a package B is installed as a recommendation when you install package A; package B's own recommends typically do not get installed.

    1. Listing uninstalled Recommends from the terminal:

    • Use aptitude

    • Click on the Views menu, and on Audit Recommendations (alternately, Ctrl+T to show the menu, arrow keys to go to Views and press R):

      enter image description here

    • This shows you a list of uninstalled recommended packages, and the "parent" package recommending them.

      enter image description here

    2. Listing uninstalled Recommends and Suggests from Synaptic:

    • If you have a desktop (or via X-forwarding), use Synaptic

    • Click on Custom Filters in the bottom-left, and then on the Missing Recommends filter in the top-left sidebar:

      enter image description here

    • Notice that unlike aptitude, Synaptic also shows "suggested" (or optional) packages such as iproute-doc

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  2. Best Answer

    For a command-line list, From:

    https://serverfault.com/questions/340075/aptitude-list-all-previous-recommended-packages

    aptitude search '~RBrecommends:~i'

    To complete your original question:

    aptitude search '~RBrecommends:~i' | awk '/^p/ {print $2}'
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