Ubuntu Search Installed Packages

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Ubuntu is one of the famous operating system distribution which is commonly used by lots of users. Different operating system definitely different mechanisms or how it operates or works.

Among those things are installing packages of programs, tools or utilities in the operating system. Ubuntu as one of the operating system available also has certain way to let users using it as their main operating system to add programs, install several tools or additional utilities.

Since Ubuntu is a variant of Debian Linux operating system distribution they share a same packaging format of installer which is in .deb format. It can be done using tool or utilities called ‘dpkg’.

The inner base of package management system is ‘dpkg’ which is used in various Debian Linux operating system distribution. It is used to install, remove and provide information about installer file in .deb format.

The next question is how can we retrieve information about installed packages ?. Well, it is actually can be done with the help of ‘dpkg’ tool. By executing the command in bash prompt, we can search any available packages which has been installed. Below is the pattern of the command :

dpkg -l

or

dkpg --list
dpkg : program, tool or utilities which is used mainly for fundamental or simple package management system in Debian Linux operating system distribution. It can be used to install, remove, update or get information for a .deb file format installer depends on the parameter of the command.
-l : parameter of dpkg command to list all available  
--list : a same parameter which the one specified above, with the -l parameter. 

Furthermore, if we want to search based on a pattern of the installed file or program name, we can specify it as an additional parameter of the command.

dpkg -l "*package_name*"

or

dpkg -l | grep *package_name*
| : redirect the output of the previous command before the pipe sign to be an input for the command specified after the pipe
grep : command to filter or to search the result of the output with certain pattern specified in the parameter
*package_name* : the pattern of the package_name which is going to be search as a parameter of grep command.  

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