Wondering How to list installed software on CentOS 7 & Ubuntu 18? We can help you.

In this article, we will see the commands to list all software, list the number of packages installed, and search for a specific package.

Also, we will add installed software on a text file, and later install the software from the text file.

Here at Bobcares, we use these commands often as a part of our Server Management Services.

How to list installed software on CentOS 7 & Ubuntu 18

We will use a file to store a list of all currently installed software named “allsoftwares.txt”

Incase of reinstalling the base Linux system, we can copy or upload this file into the system so that we will get all the software that existed before formatting the system.

Here go through the commands used by our Support Techs to list installed software on CentOS7 and Ubuntu18.

Commands used for CentOS7

Yum and rpm are commonly used on CentOS 7 servers.

1. Using RPM

To List all software:

[root@host ~]# rpm -qa

For listing the number of packages installed:

[root@host ~]# rpm -qa | wc -l

To search for a specific package:

[root@host ~]# rpm -q tmux

Adding installed software to a text file:

[root@host ~]# rpm -qa | tr '\n' ' ' > allsoftwares.txt

2. Using YUM

To list all software:

[root@host ~]# yum list installed

For listing the number of packages installed:

[root@host ~]# yum list installed | wc -l

To search for a specific package:

[root@host ~]# yum list installed | grep unzip

Adding installed software to a text file:

[root@host ~]# yum list installed | awk '{print $1}' | tr '\n' ' ' > allsoftwares.txt

Install software from the text file:

[root@host ~]# yum -y install $(cat allsoftwares.txt)

Commands used for Ubuntu18

Apt and dpkg are commonly used on Ubuntu servers

1. Using APT

To list all software:

[root@host ~]# apt list --installed

For listing the number of packages installed:

[root@host ~]# apt list --installed | wc -l

To search for a specific package:

[root@host ~]# apt list --installed | grep PHP

Adding installed software to a text file:

[root@host ~]# apt list --installed > allsoftwares.txt

Or

[root@host ~]# apt list --installed | awk -F/ -v ORS=" " 'NR>1 {print $1}' > allsoftwares.txt

Installing software from the text file:

[root@host ~]# xargs -a allsoftwares.txt apt install

2. Using DPKG

To list all software:

[root@host ~]# dpkg -l | grep ^ii

For listing the number of packages installed:

[root@host ~]# dpkg -l | grep ^ii | wc -l

To search for a specific package:

[root@host ~]# dpkg -l | grep ^ii | grep -i PHP

Adding installed software to a text file:

[root@host ~]# dpkg-query -f '${binary:Package}\n' -W > allsoftwares.txt

or

[root@host ~]# dpkg --get-selections > allsoftwares.txt

Installing software from the text file:

[root@host ~]# apt-get install < allsoftwares.txt

[Need assistance? We are happy to help you!]

Conclusion

To conclude we saw the various commands our Support Engineers use to list all software, the number of packages available on the server along with the method to copy them and use them when we reinstall our operating system(OS).