Fresh install of Ubuntu Server and there are 320 packages manually installed

[sixcorners]

I want to some how get a list of the packages I installed. I was hoping that I could just list all of the packages that were not installed automatically as a dependency. It turns out that there are 320 packages that match that description (I think). Is there a way to do what I want to do? Shouldn't all of these dependencies have been installed as a handful of meta-packages instead?

[zvacet]

I think recommended way is


aptitude --display-format '%p' search '?installed!?automatic' > ~/my-packages

This command will list all installed packages.

[sixcorners]

I think recommended way is


aptitude --display-format '%p' search '?installed!?automatic' > ~/my-packages

This command will list all installed packages.

Although it doesn't answer why a fresh install of ubuntu has 300+ packages installed instead of 5 or so meta-packages, that information is still useful to me. Thanks. :)
I don't know how I will reconcile that information with aptitude search '~i!~E' though which seems to do the same thing. I can't use the man page because the information is so sparse and it references some aptitude reference manual but I don't know how to access that.