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Tamás Szelei
Asked: 2011-05-04 03:03:21 +0800 CST

Where can I find a complete list of packages that I have installed after initial installation?

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I want to save the list of packages that have installed. I figured it might be the best to list all and diff it with the default set.

Edit: Clarification: I don't want to get the list of installed packages that are installed at the moment. Rather I want to get the list of packages that I added since the default install.

package-management

3 Answers

  1. Open the ISO CD image file with file-roller and extract the file:

    casper/filesystem.manifest-desktop

    It contains all packages that are installed after the installation.

    Just keep in mind that you can also download updates and closed source software during the installation, so you'd have the check for those packages separately.

    Ubuntu 12.04

    In Ubuntu 12.04 the list is no longer available in a single file. Instead, you you need to unpack two files:

    1. filesystem.manifest
    2. filesystem.manifest-remove

    and remove the packages in the latter from the former:

    comm -3 <(cat filesystem.manifest | awk '{print $1}' | sort) <(cat filesystem.manifest-remove | sort) > default.txt

    You can use this as basis to figure out, what has been added since the install (see this answer for details).

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  2. Best Answer

    either

    sudo dpkg-query -Wf '${Installed-Size}\t${Package}\n' | sort -n

    or 

    sudo sed -ne '/^Package: \(.*\)/{s//\1/;h;};/^Installed-Size: \(.*\)/{s//\1/;G;s/\n/ /;p;}' /var/lib/dpkg/status | sort -n

    or

    sudo dpkg --get-selections

    will list all the packages.

    Just re-route the output to a file. The 1st two lines will list it from smallest to largest with the size in front of the package name. The 3rd is in alphabetical order.

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  3. I've extracted package marks for you from default Natty Live-CD http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1399037/default-packages

    BTW, after updating from 10.04 -> 10.10 -> 11.04 I've lost ~96 default packages, and after reinstalling them, stability of my Natty system increased

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