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BonboBingo
Asked: 2011-01-25 06:34:29 +0800 CST

How to list currently not installed packages?

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I'd like to output a list of all currently not installed packages (they are visible in Synaptic for example) using only shell commands. How do I do this?

Thanks!

command-line

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    This should be it:

    aptitude -F %p search '!~i'

    This will list all packages currently not installed (including virtual packages and packages that have only their configuration files installed). If you don't want virtual packages (that's what Synaptic shows as Not installed), extend the search pattern to:

    aptitude -F %p search '!~i!~v'

    You probably need to install aptitude, as it's no longer part of the default installation as of Ubuntu 10.10.

    • 4

  2. This isn't fast, but it will work:

    apt-cache pkgnames | xargs -i1 dpkg-query -f '${Package}\n' --show '1' 2>&1 | perl -lne 'if(/matching (.*)$/){ print $1 }'

    Warning: This prints all packages, even meta-packages and virtual packages.

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