Those are a few seriously capable command line guys. Hats off to you and to the OP for asking. Wish I had spent some time learning DOS and the Linux Command Line. Regards Narendra Diwate <div class="gmail_quote">2010/6/18 Abhishek Amberkar [अभिषेक] <<a href="mailto:abhishek.amberkar@gmail.com">abhishek.amberkar@gmail.com</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <div class="im">On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Ramnarayan.K <<a href="mailto:ramnarayan.k@gmail.com">ramnarayan.k@gmail.com</a>> wrote: > 2010/6/18 Abhishek Amberkar [अभिषेक] <<a href="mailto:abhishek.amberkar@gmail.com">abhishek.amberkar@gmail.com</a>>: >>> dpkg --get-selections | awk '{print "sleep 0.5 && echo" " "$1}' | bash >>> >>> >> >> Above command lists the packages which are marked "deinstall" >> >> As `man dpkg' says "deinstall" means >> The package is selected for deinstallation (i.e. we want to remove all >> files, except configuration files). > > not sure what you mean - cannot see deinstall mentioned anywhere in the command >> >> Following command gives list of all installed pacakges >> >> dpkg -l | grep ^i | awk '{print $2}' > > Did a comparision of the results of both commands > > the first gives me 3055 packages and the second 3084. > > about 29 packages more in the latter > > so why this difference and what does the deinstall mean ?? > </div>I already gave the meaning of "deinstall" in my previous posting. (Refer `man dpkg') If you do "$ dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall" it shows "deinstall" packages. If you check state of any of these packages using "aptitude show <package_name>" it will show "not installed". So this command doesn't really shows all the `currently' installed packages on your system. -- With Regards Abhishek Amberkar <div><div></div><div class="h5"> -- ubuntu-in mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-in@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-in</a> </div></div></blockquote></div>