How to obtain list of installed packages

[Ralf Mardorf]

Hi Bret,

most likely you don't need to reinstall Ubuntu.

As Colin
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2016-May/285294.html
and I already pointed out
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2016-May/285274.html
you likely could fix the partition issue without reinstalling.

To explain what exactly you need to do, we need to know more about the
partition issue.

Assumed you want or really should need to reinstall, then most likely
Tom's hint is ok.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2016-May/285292.html

Have you installed most, if not all packages with the Ubuntu default
setting, to automatically install recommended packages too? If so,
Tom's advice likely is ok.

I never used a list of packages to restore this list of packages, so I
just guess that what Tom's describes does work (as long as you don't
have a mix of packages with and without recommended dependencies
installed).

You mentioned, that you never installed whoopsie, but did you ever
remove it?

"What's whoopsie ?

    It's the "Ubuntu Error Reporting" daemon, and is installed by
    default in both desktop/server installations." -
http://askubuntu.com/questions/135540/what-is-the-whoopsie-process-and-how-can-i-remove-it

Regards,
Ralf

PS:

I suspect whoopsie not always automatically is installed by the server
installation, or perhaps an expert option of the installer allowed me
to not install whoopsie, since seemingly I never removed it:

# grep "Removing apport" /mnt/moonstudio/var/log/apt/term.log
# zgrep "Removing apport" /mnt/moonstudio/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz 
Removing apport (2.18-0ubuntu5) ...
Removing apport-symptoms (0.20) ...
# grep "Removing whoopsie" /mnt/moonstudio/var/log/apt/term.log
# zgrep "Removing whoopsie" /mnt/moonstudio/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz 
# systemd-nspawn -q dpkg -l apport whoopsie 
dpkg-query: no packages found matching apport
dpkg-query: no packages found matching whoopsie

On Wed, 11 May 2016 22:26:20 +0200, Tom H wrote:
>I'm not surprised that you have a non-standard install :)

:D