How to find what 'new' packages have been installed?

[Mario Vukelic]

On Wed, 2008-11-12 at 17:30 +0000, Chris G wrote:
> Is there a way to find out what packages have been installed by the
> user (i.e. me) after the inital installation of an Ubuntu system?

The Synaptic package manager keeps a history under menu File. 

Aptitude keeps a log in /var/log/aptitude, but you will probably have to
play with the settings in /etc/logrotate.conf and/or /etc/logrotate.d/*
to make the logs permanent (or periodically copy them away.)

Then there is /var/log/apt/term.log and /var/log/dpkg.log (again, see
logrotate settings). 

/var/log/dist-upgrade/ might also be interesting.

> I like to record what I have added (and why) in the way of
> customisation so that the next time I build a system I have some hints
> available. 

Tip: keep a system diary too, many things get changed that have nothing
to do with packages.