This short guide shows you how to get a list of all installed Packages on Debian Linux. Packages on Debian get installed with the apt package installer. We will use the dpkg command, which is part of the apt toolset, to query the installed packages database.
Get all installed Debian packages
dpkg --get-selections
As you can see, this command will show you a rather long list. To save the list to a file, use this command:
dpkg --get-selections > /tmp/packages.txt
We save the list in the file /tmp/packages.txt.
To scroll step by step through the package list, use:
dpkg --get-selections | more
Here is the result:
If you seek a specific package, use the grep command:
dpkg --get-selections | grep nginx
will show you all packages that contain the word "Nginx" in their name.
Example:
root@sv1:/# dpkg --get-selections | grep nginx
nginx-common install
nginx-extras install