How to list installed packages on Debian

This short guide shows you how to get a list of all installed Packages on Debian Linux. Packages on Debian get installed with the apt package installer. We will use the dpkg command, which is part of the apt toolset, to query the installed packages database.

Get all installed Debian packages

dpkg --get-selections

As you can see, this command will show you a rather long list. To save the list to a file, use this command:

dpkg --get-selections > /tmp/packages.txt

We save the list in the file /tmp/packages.txt.

To scroll step by step through the package list, use:

dpkg --get-selections | more

Here is the result:

If you seek a specific package, use the grep command:

dpkg --get-selections | grep nginx

will show you all packages that contain the word “Nginx” in their name.

Example:

root@sv1:/# dpkg --get-selections | grep nginx
nginx-common                                    install
nginx-extras                                    install

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