Do you know Foxmarks? Its an easy way to synchronise bookmarks and to save them. With foxmarks I don't have to worry about having saved all my bookmarks before I reinstall Ubuntu because they are not only local on my pc but also on a server.
I would like to have the same for my packages. It would be great if I could just create an account and automatically save the packet names I have installed (e.g. apache2, php5, vlc - just the names, not more). So if I would re-install ubuntu, I would just access my account and ubuntu would install the packages I had before.
This feature could also be connected with the popularity contest - so people would take an advantage of this contest and you would get better results.
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Answers to the Comments:
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Why don't make a shell-script like $ sudo apt-get install apache php vlc?
1. comfort: Especial for newbies' it's much easier if they don't have to code anything
2. no disadvantages: You should not have to use this if you have doubts where this information
goes to (just like you don't have to use the popularity contest) and I think this would not influence
the performance.
3. so why not?
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Why don't use this procedure?
On the source machine:
$ dpkg --get-selections > /some/file/called/my-packages.txt
On the fresh destination machine:
$ dpkg --set-selections > /wherever/you/put/my-packages.txt
$ apt-get dselect-upgrade
[....]
