If you find yourself wanting to list all the packages installed on your system, there’s one of many handy commands to do that:
List packages that are installed
dpkg --get-selections | grep -v deinstall
List package, version, architecture and quick description.
dpkg -l
Alternate list similar to above
apt --installed list
-
Or filter to just show automatically installed packages (most likely dependencies)
apt --installed list | grep 'automatic'
-
Or filter them out:
apt --installed list | grep -v 'automatic'
List package and descriptions only
apropos "" | grep "(1)"
Other Tips
Can’t see it all?
You may find that not everything is seen in the terminal, you can change this by amending the settings:
- Edit → Profile Preferences
- Under “Scrolling” tab, check “Unlimited” for scrollback.
Dump to a file
Sure, just add a >
at the end followed by the path or filename:
> packages.txt
Compare with another list
Providing you’ve used the same commands and dumped to file, consider using a graphical diff tool like diffuse
or meld
to compare the files. These tools will nicely highlight changes between the two lists.