If you’re using a Debian based Linux Desktop such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint – or Debian itself naturally – you can easily create a simple text file of all packages installed on the machine.

I have a habit of removing a lot of the “extras” (junk) which comes with the basic install – not religiously, but just to keep it reasonably tidy and not have too much stuff eating up the harddisk, requiring updates (without providing any value).

Creating a list of the currently installed packages is quite simple – just open a terminal and enter:

dkpg --get-selections

(you will probably want to redirect the output into a file – or at least pipe it through more).