List user installed software

[nought2]

When preparing to migrate from one OS installation to another I print lists of installed packages.
These can be saved to text files to reference when installing software to a new OS.
In the newly installed OS software items can then be ticked off a list.

Commands like...
snap list
flatpak list
...do these respective parts of the job neatly.

For packages installed via apt I don't know how this might be done.
Sure, I can search packages...
apt list --installed | grep package_name
...but that will only pull up packages one at a time.
And it provides no reminder of installed packages that do not spring to mind.

I am particularly interested in finding a way to print a list of packages that appear in Show Applications.
They are usually the ones I care about the most.
Is there any way of creating a list of them?

[HermanAB]

You can simply list all installed packages and run that list on a new machine. Packages that are already installed will be skipped.

[cg-152]

The applications that show up in GNOME's "Show Applications" menu all have .desktop files in /usr/share/applications or ~/.local/share/applications.

dpkg --search '*.desktop' | awk '{print $1}' | sed "s/://" | sort --unique

would list all of their package names, including pre-installed programs.

Source: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1091...-which-has-gui

[nought2]

The applications that show up in GNOME's "Show Applications" menu all have .desktop files in /usr/share/applications or ~/.local/share/applications.

dpkg --search '*.desktop' | awk '{print $1}' | sed "s/://" | sort --unique

would list all of their package names, including pre-installed programs.

Thank you. This produces a list that is close enough to what I was looking for.
The output includes results that are of no interest but I think all the ones I am interested in are there too.

You can simply list all installed packages and run that list on a new machine. Packages that are already installed will be skipped.

That's very interesting.
How is it done? Do you have a link to a page where the method is described?

[Holger_Gehrke]

apt-mark showmanual

produces a list of all installed packages that have been recorded as 'manually installed'. This list also includes everything installed during the original installation of Ubuntu (the installer sets that attribute so removing some pre-installed software won't break the system). Removing those packages from that list can be done, provided you still have the logs the installer left behind in /var/log/installer. There should be a file /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz. This contains a gzipped detailed list of the packages installed. You can reduce that to a simple list of packages with

sudo zcat /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz | sed -n '/^Package: / s/^Package: //p'

The 'sudo' is necessary because the log-file is only accessible for root. Combine the two lists into one , sort it and write out just the packages which are in the list only once

(apt-mark showmanual;sudo zcat /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz | sed -n '/^Package: / s/^Package: //p')|sort|uniq -u > ~/packages.list

You should now have a text file named packages.list in your $HOME with all manually installed packages but without the ones from the original installation. Using that list to install those packages should be as simple as 'xargs -a packages.list sudo apt install'

Holger

[oldfred]

If upgrading, you may want to edit it to remove obsolete, old kernels or others. It will not re-install anything already installed.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...ngSamePackages
from lovinglinux - use dpkg to list installed apps
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...75&postcount=5

From old install
dpkg --get-selections > ~/my-packages
From New install
sudo dpkg --set-selections < my-packages
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade
#IF you get this error:
dpkg: warning: package not in database
sudo apt-get install dselect
sudo dselect
-> Update
-> Install

[HermanAB]

Ayup, with this kind of thing, it pays to read the dpkg and apt man pages...

[nought2]

Yesterday I installed 20.04.1 Focal to a new partition on my boot drive.
After the install I ran...
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
...to get the system up to date.
Then I added packages to my preference. One at a time from listed notes recorded from a recent good 18.04.5 Bionic installation.

I tested Holger's commands on the new Focal install.

apt-mark showmanual

This produced an output with 68 lines. It's easy for me to see the things I've added there.

I checked /var/log/installer.

zen@gnuzen:~$ cd /var/log/installer
zen@gnuzen:/var/log/installer$ ls
casper.log  initial-status.gz  partman  telemetry
debug       media-info         syslog   version

Log file is still there.
I tried your suggested command:

(apt-mark showmanual;sudo zcat /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz | sed -n '/^Package: / s/^Package: //p')|sort|uniq -u > ~/packages.list

Its output file packages.list had 1552 lines. It contained many items that I had not added. But who knows what was updated right after the vanilla install. That update downloaded about 150MB.

To test your suggested install command 'xargs -a packages.list sudo apt install' I would need to create a new install of Focal. Not impossible, but I don't want to do it right at the moment.

If upgrading, you may want to edit it to remove obsolete, old kernels or others. It will not re-install anything already installed.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...ngSamePackages
from lovinglinux - use dpkg to list installed apps
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...75&postcount=5

From old install
dpkg --get-selections > ~/my-packages
From New install
sudo dpkg --set-selections < my-packages
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade
#IF you get this error:
dpkg: warning: package not in database
sudo apt-get install dselect
sudo dselect
-> Update
-> Install

As a test I ran...

zen@gnuzen:~$ dpkg --get-selections > /media/zen/DG-1gb/dpkg-selections-dg

...which saved output to a USB stick. Output has 1882 lines, so ~300 more than Holger's command output.

This looks like a reliable method. I will certainly try it out.
Thanks for posting it, oldfred. If the process works cleanly it will save lots of time.

Thank you all for your responses.
Although I'm yet to test your suggestions my query has been comprehensively addressed.
Hence marked solved.

Cheers,
nought2

[oldfred]

I might compare the two files to see differences.
I have found old kernels and some software I did not want anymore in list, so just manually delete that line. It is just a text file.

[nought2]

I might compare the two files to see differences.

With >1500 lines in each text file it is difficult to compare them manually.

Can that sorting be done via terminal?

Anyhow, in this instance the files were produced from same OS only minutes apart.
The different commands must be finding different things.

Agreed, a human visual scan would be worthwhile.
As long as the human knew the type of things to look out for.