There may come a point in your Linux journey where you must list the installed software in Lubuntu. This is easily done and I will show you a couple of quick ways to get this list in the terminal. So, if you want to list installed software in Lubuntu, this is the article for you!
I’m writing this article because it’s quick and easy. I won’t make this article as long as I’ve made recent articles. We’re just going to get to the point, more or less. I will show you a couple of different ways, each with its own merits. You can decide which way works for you.
The article headline and related material reference Lubuntu. That’s because I’m using Lubuntu when I write this article. I am a Lubuntu member, after all. It makes sense that I’d be using Lubuntu!
Plus, it’s a weekend. I’ve formalized the idea that articles written during weekends will be easier. I have a life outside of writing articles and doing other things to help the Linux community. (It’s amazing, but it’s true!)
However, you can use these commands on anything that uses dpkg or apt. That means you can use these commands on Debian, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, and myriad other distros that use .deb files as their software packages. These commands are fairly universal across those distros and you shouldn’t have any issue running either of them on any of those machines.
Caveat:
The following commands will not show you Snap packages or flatpak packages. Software installed by those means does not show up in these commands. Only software installed with dpkg/apt (which includes all .deb packages even if you used a GUI installation method) will be shown.
Fortunately, that’s not a problem.
To show flatpak applications:
1 | flatpak list |
To show Snap applications:
1 | snap list |
AppImages aren’t really installed and I can find no way to list those that make sense. Sure, we could use the find command and list any .appimage file, but that won’t tell us if you use it. We’ll just ignore those for the sake of simplicity and to stay within the realms of ‘reasonable’.
List Installed Software In Lubuntu:
In the opening paragraph, I mentioned that this was something you’d be doing in the terminal. That means you need an open terminal. As you’re using Lubuntu, you can just press
With your terminal now open, the first command we’ll be using is dpkg. This will not show all the installed applications at the same time. This outputs a nicely formatted list. You can see the version of the software on the right. It’s easy to understand.
It will show you a page at a time and your arrow button lets you scroll down to see them all. To exit the list, you press the
1 | sudo dpkg-query -l |
The second command might be a little more useful, but it’s not formatted nearly as nicely. This time around, we’ll be using the apt command. If you don’t know, apt is basically a front end for dpkg. Now you know.
If you want to use apt to list installed software in Lubuntu, you would just run the following command:
1 | sudo apt list --installed |
That will spit out the entire list, though you could pipe it to the less command. To do that, try this command:
1 | sudo apt list --installed | less |
That will output the list a page at a time. Like the above dpkg command, if you want to exit the list, you just press the
This command is also useful to create a list of installed applications. Again, this won’t list Snaps or flatpaks, but it will list the traditionally installed applications. That means it’s pretty useful to create a list, especially if you want to recreate the system later. To do that, just run this command:
1 | sudo apt list --installed > installed_applications.txt |
There you go, you now have a handy list of installed applications in Lubuntu! Pretty easy, isn’t it?
That’s all there is to it today.
Closure:
Yeah, it’s a weekend. This article might just break 800 words, so it’s not nearly as long as many of my recent articles. This time around, you’ve learned how to list installed software in Lubuntu. It wasn’t even that complicated and you’ve been given the choice between two commands. Just pick the one that works for you and commit it to memory. You’ll be golden and have taken one more step in your route of Linux learning.
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