List packages installed in different ways on your Ubuntu system

In the next article we will see how list packages installed in Ubuntu. On how see the packages we have installed A colleague already spoke to us some time ago on this blog. If you are one of those who regularly install software to test it, or perhaps you do not remember if you installed this or that program last week, what you are going to read next may help you.

All the commands that we are going to see in the following lines form part of the help of the respective commands, but many users have not realized this possibility and how useful it can be in some cases.

List recently installed packages in Ubuntu

View installed software from Ubuntu software option

Si you don't want to use the terminal and its commands, you can always see the applications installed on the system by opening the software option. Once in it, you just have to click on the tab "Installed". There you will see the list of installed applications.

View installed software from Synaptic package manager

Another graphical way to see the packages installed on your computer will be using the Synaptic package manager. You just have to go to the option "Status" and then select the one that says “Installed ”.

View system logs

In Gnu / Linux systems a record of everything that happens. Luckily for the users, they can be check all those records. These will allow us view recently installed packages.

In Ubuntu there are a couple of ways to do this. We will be able check dpkg or apt log. To make this query we can use the grep command, to filter the result and show only installed packages. You can see the dpkg log by opening a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and typing in it:

grep " install " /var/log/dpkg.log

As I said, you can also check the apt registry. This is going to show only the programs that we install using the apt command. To perform the query, in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) we are going to write:

grep " install " /var/log/apt/history.log

List packages installed with apt

Though apt-get command does not have a direct option to list installed packages, apt if you have an option for this. To check the packages installed through apt, in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) you have to write:

apt list --installed

The above command will show a list of all packages that have been installed using apt and .deb files. In this case, the packages that were installed as a dependency. For this reason, the output of this command will show installed applications, libraries, and other packages that we didn't even know were installed on our computer.

As you will see if you use the above command, the list of installed packages is huge. For this reason, the most logical thing will be use grep and filter the output for a given packet. This can be done as follows:

apt list --installed | grep nombre-programa

List the packages installed using dpkg

We will be able use dpkg command to list all installed packages in Ubuntu. This list can be consulted using the following command in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):

dpkg-query -l

You can also use the command:

dpkg -l

The previous two commands can be filter on your output with grep, as it was done with aptlist to search for a specific package. You just have to add after each of these commands:

| grep nombre-programa

List installed snap packages

If what interests us is know the installed Snap packages In the system, in a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) we will use the following command:

snap list

The snap package list too indicates which apps are from a verified publisher by a green tick.

List installed Flatpak packages

For list all installed Flatpak packages In the system, in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) we will use the command:

flatpak list

These are just the most basic ways to know what software is installed in Ubuntu and that any user can use. There are other commands to get more complete results, but these I think are no longer as simple as the ones we have just seen.