Get Installed Packages on Ubuntu

To get a list of installed packages can be useful in situations where want to reinstall a system or install the same packages on another system. This tutorial demonstrates how to get installed packages on Ubuntu.

Use dpkg-query or dpkg command with -l option to get a list of installed packages on the system:

dpkg-query -l

dpkg -l

The command prints the package name, version, architecture, and short description. Output example:

||/ Name               Version                Architecture Description
+++-==================-======================-============-==================================================>
ii  adduser            3.118ubuntu5           all          add and remove users and groups
ii  amd64-microcode    3.20191218.1ubuntu2    amd64        Processor microcode firmware for AMD CPUs
ii  apparmor           3.0.4-2ubuntu2.1       amd64        user-space parser utility for AppArmor
ii  apport             2.20.11-0ubuntu82.1    all          automatically generate crash reports for debugging
ii  apport-symptoms    0.24                   all          symptom scripts for apport
ii  apt                2.4.6                  amd64        commandline package manager
..............

To filter output, use grep command. It can be useful to find if a specific package is installed:

dpkg -l | grep python