[ubuntu-in] keeping track of installed pkgs

[nan budh]

friends 
is there any standard way of knowing what all softwares i have installed on my ubuntu6.06 uptill now? what i mean is that the softwares which i installed thru synaptic can be uninstalled thru it too. but there are some which i compiled and installed directly. They donot show up on synaptic or in Add/Remove softwares utility. Again I suspect that not all which i installed thru apt-get show up on synaptic either. How should i keep track? One thing that worries me is that when i upgrade my ubuntu version i shall have to download all of them again. i have read somewhere there is a utility which creates a CD of all the inntalled pkgs.
BTW what is the ideal directory to install a program to when i am doing it myself.i am currenlty doing it to /opt. is it ok?
regards
nanbudh

       
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