Swarthmore College Department of Computer Science

available software

For Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux, you can use the dpkg command to see what software is installed. Just type dpkg -l at the command line, and you will get a (long) list of installed packages. If you know what you're looking for, you can send the output of that command into a grep, as shown here (searching for mutt): 

$ dpkg -l | grep mutt
ii  mutt   1.3.28-2.2   Text-based mailreader...
$
The two i's at the beginning of that output mean the mutt package is installed.

We also use a program called stow to manage the installation of some additional softwares, that aren't part of Ubuntu/Debian (e.g., Mathematica). Looking in /usr/local/stow will give you an idea of what we have installed: 

$ ls /usr/local/stow
Acrobat-5.0.9/        ffmpeg-CVS-2002-6-10/  pc2/
Acrobat4/             firefox-0.9.1/         pine-4.56/
MatLab/               gdal-1.2.1/            pine-4.58/
Mathematica-4.2/      gsl-1.5/               player-1.5/
MozillaFirebird/      imap-2004a/            plt-204/
Parallaxis-III/       j2sdk1.4.1_03/         plt-206p1gcc2/
Rational/             j2sdk1.4.2_01/         plt208-debian/
SWIG-1.3.19/          lc3tools/              purify/
eclipse-2.1/          librtk-2.3.0/          roberts/
eclipse-2.1.1-motif/  mozilla/               stage-1.3.4/
eclipse-2.1.2-motif/  mozilla-1.7/           valgrind-1.9.6/
eclipse-3.0-motif/    mozilla-installer/     xv-3.10a/
eclipse-3.0M4-motif/  ode-0.039/
elm2.4.ME+.102/       opcode/
$