Quick Question about Software Lists

[Buddlespit]

I sometimes hit bumps in the road that require me to re-install Kubuntu from scratch. I have a separate /home partition, so I usually have my settings saved. But I can spend all day trying to remember what software I had installed. Every once in a while, I back up my sources.list to my /home folder and I use that to remind me what software I need to install. But, is there an easier way?

My question is: Is there a way to list non-default software added after installation? And maybe re-install those missing apps (and dependencies) via cli?

[Buddlespit]

I don't care what Steve says about you, you're alright!

[SteveRiley]

i don't care what steve says about you, you're alright!;d

lolwut?

[rk4262]

I would like to know the same thing. Unfortunately I'm not quite as good at Linux as I was with Windows, and my way of learning means doing things I really don't have the skills to do, so i end up having to reinstall. I haven't gotten quite ready to attempt building my own distro yet, even using the distro builders. I'm afraid I'm going to have to break down and give that a try in the near future.

[SteveRiley]

This...

dpkg --get-selections

will list all installed packages.

Using this command and its companion dpkg --set-selections it's possible to sync the installed package state from one machine to another. But as you'll see in the linked post, it didn't work for the poster. I've never used it myself, as I think it's too much automation. You could run the --get-selections command on the system before you rebuild and save the output to a file. Then after you finish rebuilding, run the command and then diff the output against the saved output. Now you'll see what remains. to install.