Also, there is a very interesting article at Linux Owns showing three steps to get all your favourite packages (back) fast. I added a fourth step actually saving your package list for later use. Deriving it straight from there (without testing, since unfortunatelly my last machine has been hardyed just a couple of hours ago):
- integrate medibuntu sources.list
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/gutsy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list
- add server key
wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update
- write a text file listing all package names you wish installed separated with spaces — you should be able to instead put every package name in one line with trailing \\ (double back-slash) but as I said: I haven’t tested it, yet! Name it, say,
most_important_debs. -
sudo aptitude --assume-yes install < most_important_debs
You might want to approve the package list before install. In that case omit –assume-yes
Let me know it someone used it (hopefully with success).
Update 2008/05/15: It does help to read and think before you speak (or write for that matter). I got it completely wring. The linked article is about packages from Medibuntu only. OK then, if it’s like this I just alter 1, 2, 4 and 3 -> 1 
- build a list of your (most important, enduser) packages
- update-manager -d, i.e. dist-upgrade your system
- employ aptitude to read in your file (to be exact it’s bash that redirect from the file…)
Of course, this method still does not solve the problem of saving your personal settings but still get all the system settings from the new distro release. But this shouldn’t be that hard for release maintainers since they (potentially) know which package version had what config files delivered or generated. From there it should be easy to determine if a system config file has been changed be the user -> show diff. Or do I overlook something once again?
Update 2008/05/15: Even better looks aptitude-run-state-bundle:
DESCRIPTION
aptitude-create-state-bundle produces a compressed archive storing the files that are required to replicate the current
package archive state. The following files and directories are included in the bundle:
· $HOME/.aptitude
· /var/lib/aptitude
· /var/lib/apt
· /var/cache/apt/*.bin
· /etc/apt
· /var/lib/dpkg/status
The output of this program can be used as an argument to aptitude-run-state-bundle(1).
Update 2008/05/15: A good starting point would be either
dpkg -l | grep ^i | editor
or if you don’t use aptitude this also shows (only currently) installed packages
dpkg -l | grep ^i | editor
One needs to remove non-package-name strings, though. As I haven’t come around to learn sed (line editing) I cannot show how to deploy sed to do it. Anyone?
9.0.48.0:
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