[Nottingham] Preserving a list of packages installed (Ubuntu but could be general!)

[David Aldred]

Something wich came to my mind recently...

Installing a new version of linux is always fun and intersting, but the 
downside is always the time spent getting the machine back to where you want 
it (mainly adding all the extra packages you want, and configuring them).

Is there any standard way (or any Ubuntu specific way) of automagically 
getting from whatever is installed as standard to having all the current 
packages (re)installed?  I suppose I'm thinking of (in some way) saving the 
current configuration that apt-get (or whatever) holds which tells it what 
packages are installed, then using that to determine what extra packages need 
installing to restore the original software setup. 

(Mandriva does allow you to make a disk at the install->select packages stage 
so that you can later replicate the set of packages put in on initial 
installation, but that doesn't get you to where you are several weeks of 
fiddling about later!)

-- 
David Aldred