Some alternative ways of showing the package manager history on Debian, Ubuntu or Linux Mint, do not display a complete log. It does not work for other packages, like Flatpak or Snap, or for software installed from source, and so on. This works for DEB packages installed in any way, be it using a graphical tool such as Synaptic, Gnome Software, Update Manager, or a command line tool like apt, apt-get, aptitude or dpkg. You can use grep to parse this file from the command line and only display installed, upgraded or removed packages, depending on what you need.

To be able to get a complete history list of package changes, including installed, upgraded or removed DEB packages, and show the date on which a particular action was performed, in Debian or Ubuntu, one can read the dpkg (the low-level infrastructure for handling the installation and removal of Debian software packages) log available at /var/log/dpkg.log.

This article explains how to show a history of recently installed, upgraded or removed packages, on Debian, Ubuntu or Linux Mint, from the command line.

Debian list installed packages