Find all user-installed packages

Look at these files,

1. '/var/log/installer/initial-status.gz' -- your primary installation
   • this file date would be your installation date (i think)
   • '/var/log/dpkg.log' update timeline (this is what you want)
   • '/var/log/apt/term.log' -- things apt updated on your system
   • '/var/cache/apt/archives/' will contain the deb packages downloaded for installation

Update: use the following two steps for exact list of new installs:

1. execute: grep -w install /var/log/dpkg.log > full-list.log
2. Look at lines beyond the /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz timestamp

Since you want to get a clean installation on another system with these packages, you could even copy the 'deb' files from the 'cache/apt/archives' path to that of the new installation and get them installed in one shot (without downloading them again).

Just for grins, I put together a one-liner (here split for clarity) that figures out packages manually installed, excluding those installed initially and any packages automatically installed:

comm -13 \
  <(gzip -dc /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz | sed -n 's/^Package: //p' | sort) \
  <(comm -23 \
    <(dpkg-query -W -f='${Package}\n' | sed 1d | sort) \
    <(apt-mark showauto | sort) \
  )

This works both in bash and in zsh.

Based on the information above, I wrote a short Python script to list packages that were manually installed. See this link.

Feel free to use it although I assume no responsibility for it. However, feedback and suggestions are always welcome.

Check my answer here to a related question: How can I display the list of all packages installed on my Debian system?. Some of the other answers on the question also contain nice suggestions on getting such a list.

This question should be marked a duplicate since the earlier question also covers this question, but it might be useful to have this question stand on its own so it's easier to find.

This is a hack-job, but it completely works.

First, go to http://releases.ubuntu.com/maverick/ (or whatever version of Ubuntu you're using) and grab the *.manifest file that is associated with the version of Ubuntu you're using.

Then, run the following script (replacing <manifest file>, angle brackets and all, with the path to the file you downloaded. You can always append > output to the end to make a file dump.

diff --suppress-common-lines <(sed 's/ .*//' <manifest file>) <(dpkg --get-selections | sed 's/[ \t].*//') | grep '>' | sed 's/[>] //'