Clearing the synaptic decks...

[adam.tropics]

So I'm sure most people here have installed and tweaked away until they are happy with their setup of Ubuntu.......more than once!

After it's all done and dusted, I'm pretty sure there must normally be a whole load of junk, as in non-required packages or files that may have been dependancies at one time but now are just space fillers. I know synaptic does a terrific job and all, but is there a way to check it!!??

It could be just me, but i hate the idea of keeping stuff for no reason....

[Haegin]

Also is there a way of saving a list of what you have installed so you can enter one command or click a few buttons and synaptic will churn through and bring you back to where you were before? (Just with regards to installed programs - not a backup, just a list of installed programs)

[Jussi Kukkonen]

Try deborphan:
deborphan finds "orphaned" packages on your system.
It determines which packages have no other packages
depending on their installation, and shows you a list of
these packages. It is most useful when finding libraries,
but it can be used on packages in all sections.

[marksi]

You could also try sudo apt-get auto-clean which clears out the local repository of re‐trieved package files.