Reinstalling our best tools in Ubuntu 9.04

Finally, Ubuntu 9.04 is right on the way. Since 8.10 version, I have installed lots of tools, and now it is time to install this 9.04 pearl. But, of course I get worried of wasteing some of the tools I was allways making use of. Here I'll show what to do to get all them again.


Levantamento de Software Instalado
I have been using aptitude instead of apt-get for some time, for it is already in the system by the default, in any Debian variant, as Ubuntu is. Besides, aptitude records in log every action. This log file is /var/log/aptitude.log.

Thus, the folowing line will reveal back all tools that have been installed by aptitude, in Ubuntu:

sudo cat /var/log/aptitude | grep "\[INSTALAR\]" |\
cut -d" " -f2 > ~/Desktop/Inst.txt
sudo zcat /var/log/aptitude*gz | grep "\[INSTALAR\]" |\
cut -d" " -f2 >> ~/Desktop/Inst.txt

Consider the "\" by the end of 1st and 3rd lines. It tells BASH that the following line is the continuation of the actual line. Thus I can assure that there are only 2 lines of CLI code. Instead of having them typed, I strongly suggest you to copy and paste them both on BASH CLI.

A file Inst.txt will pop up in the Desktop, and in it a list of the installed files. This is the content of my file:

alien-arena
avant-window-navigator
build-essential
chromium
compizconfig-settings-manager
debian-keyring
dia
extremetuxracer
exuberant-ctags
fdutils
ffmpeg
flashplugin-nonfree
frozen-bubble
gdm-themes
gnochm
gnome-ppp
gpaint
hping2
htop
idle
iftop
imagemagick
ipcalc
iptraf
k3b
mozilla-plugin-vlc
mpg123
msttcorefonts
nmap
p7zip
python3
rails
rar
smplayer
sox
ssh
sun-java6-jre
swat
traceroute
transcode
tree
unrar
vim
virtualbox-ose
vlc
wireshark

I removed the dependencies, because they will automatically be installed, but you don't need to.

So, after installing the new Ubuntu version , I will be able to install my stuff with this following line:

aptitude install $(cat ~/Desktop/Inst.txt)

Of course, this only applies to packages installed via aptitude. tar.gz and other ways of installation usually does not apply, because they are not logged by aptitude log file.