[PLUG] Getting a list of installed programs

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Sun Nov 1 20:51:03 UTC 2009


I have made a full system backup, plus I have made a second backup of
~/ to another location. I am about to leave for Fry's where I will
purchase a new hard drive for my Thinkpad T61. My intention is to
install 64-bit Debian Squeeze on the new hard drive and put the old one
(with Jaunty) in a USB case. 

After installing Debian I will play with it for a week or so to see
whether I like it better than the Jaunty on the old hard disk. In the
process I will want to reinstall all my apps. I assume that Squeeze
(like Ubuntu) will come with some applications, but I have a ton more
that I installed. I'd like to get a list of them, preferably on paper,
before I take out the old hard disk.

Synaptic lists 2203 packages installed. Not only do I not see any way
to print out the list from Synaptic, I also note that the vast majority
are dependencies for "real" programs that I have installed, as well as
dependencies for Ubuntu itself. Synaptic does have a utility to create
a script to install all programs on another computer, but that is not
my desire. Part of the process is housecleaning - I want to install
most of the programs I currently have installed in Ubuntu, but not
necessarily all of them. Furthermore, some may be causing my continuing
problems with bluetooth and other issues.

I can go into Applications and write everything down on a piece of
paper, but there are a lot of command line programs that I have
installed as well. 

Does anyone have any suggestions?



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