I want to make a list of all the programs I have installed on 12.04 before I do a clean install of 12.10. I have seen various ways of getting the computer to come up with a list, but this would be a list of **every** program on the PC. What I would really like is a list of the "main" programs and as such I thought a complete list of all the programs referenced by alacarte from the gnome fallback menu would be the way forward.

Is there an easy way of doing this please? Is the alacarte configuration held in a plain text file somewhere?

Please advise.