[Tfug] List of packages required to make a good Debian Desktop system

[Glen Pfeiffer]

On 07/05/2007 02:33 PM, Claude Rubinson wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 04, 2007 at 10:36:45PM -0700, Glen Pfeiffer wrote:
>> I am putting together a list of software that I use on my 
>> Debian boxes.
>> [snip]
> 
> [snip]
> As you're using Debian, you can grab all currently installed 
> packages in a variety of ways: `dpkg --get-selections` will 
> pull everything. If you use aptitude (which tracks 
> automatically installed packages), you can run `aptitude -F 
> '%p' search '~i !~M'` to get all manually installed packages.  
>

Aren't there are lots of packages that are shown to be manually 
installed just as a result of installing Debian? Here are some 
packages that were installed during the base install but were 
returned by that search:

	acpid
	adduser
	alacarte
	alsa-base
	alsa-utils
	apache2
	apt
	apt-file
	apt-utils
	aptitude
	aptitude-doc-en
	at
[snip]
	less
	libacl1
	libattr1
	libbind9-0
	libblkid1
	libbz2-1.0
	libc6
	libc6-amd64
	libc6-dev
	libcap1
	libcomerr2
	libconsole
	libdb4.2
	libdb4.3
	libdb4.4

Nevertheless, it is still very helpful. There are about 350 
packages returned, but I can whittle that down fairly quickly.


> aptitude -F '%p' search '~i !~M'
>

I tried a similar search but I had no idea that the terms needed 
to be placed within single quotes. So my search never worked 
correctly. I have read the man pages for aptitude, and I was 
disappointed as it appeared to be geared toward using the GUI, 
which I strongly dislike. For search patterns, the man page 
references the aptitude manual. I read most of the search 
patterns section in the manual yet never learned about the single 
quotes. Is there a better reference? Maybe I didn't read enough 
of it.


> Dump the results to a text file which you can pipe to 
> apt-get/aptitude to recreate/install your system.
>

In addition to the list of packages I also included information 
on how to make Sun's Java the default JVM, and where to get media 
codecs, links to websites with more information, etc. 

I have considered scripting the install which would modify 
sources.list, perform an update, and then install all the 
packages. I could use your idea for the last step. On the other 
hand, most of the boxes I work on only use a subset of the 
packages. For example only three will have the children's games 
installed.

Thanks for the ideas! You have given me food for thought, and 
solved a problem I was having searching with aptitude. :-)

-- 
Glen