How can we figure out if a package is core or not?

[Thomas Ward]

Alberto,

On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 6:55 PM, Alberto Salvia Novella
<es20490446e at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was wondering if there's an easier way to figure out if a package is core
> or not than entering into the Terminal the "apt-cache show [package]" line,
> since this requires the package to be already installed

Actually, this is incorrect.  You do not need to have the package
installed to run `apt-cache show` on any package.  Case in point: I do
not have `pff-tools` installed on my 14.04 server.  Running `apt-cache
show pff-tools` actually shows the information even though the package
is not installed.

> and this makes triaging slow.
>

------
Thomas