I am thinking of getting a VPS and using Ubuntu with it. I've installed linux on home servers and I almost always choose a very bare system and then install packages manually after the install is complete.
However for a VPS, some providers have pre-made images that can be used. If I were to use one of them, what is the easiest way of finding out/listing what is already installed, including things like locations and versions?
dpkg -l will give you a list of all the applications installed on a debian based box. For more info, check this page.
Also, dpkg -L <pkgname> shows the files installed for .
Some other useful tricks: if you install "debian-goodies", you'll have the "dpigs" command to display installed package sorted by disk space usage.
Another useful trick if you want to make several similar installations : use
dpkg --get-selections > installedpackages.txt
On the installed machine then transfer the file to the new machine, and
cat installedpackages.txt | dpkg --set-selections
Then do
apt-get -u dselect-upgrade
And wait :)
On CentOS/RHEL/Fedora/etc:
rpm -qa | sort
Query the rpm database for all packages, and put them in alphabetical order :)
Afterwards, I'd rely on using yum to manage the packages, rather than rpm directly, as it will also handle dependencies.
