I'm running Kubuntu 14.04 and have done a LOT of work customizing my OS with app/utilities/programs/etc installs as well as customizing things like dolphin and other programs like Filezilla, vmware, etc.

I'm wondering if there is a way to export a list of all the installed software on the system, or, better yet, that which was installed after the initial OS install.

I have never done a re-install of a Linux system, always a fresh install of a new distro or upgrade and never before was Linux my main OS for 16+ months (this is a record for me for any OS to go without having to do a complete reinstall, so I guess that is saying something for Linux here!!!)

So, can anyone give me any pointers on what I can do to save some of my setings? I'd obviously save things like fstab and my samba config file and various other settings like that. IDK if there is a way to do this automatically or if it has to be done manually.

What I am curious about is transferring my SSH encryption keys (I'm not sure exactly what they are - when ssh'ing to a server for the first time, a key is exchanged and or generated and stored.). I've had a very stange thing happening to me recently where a number of off-site Linux web servers keep asking me to accept the new key every time I log in - which never happened before and I didn't change settings and also my FTP logins aren't working like they used to, now they always prompt for a password. IMHO it seems like there may be some MITM shadiness going on (many more reasons than just this) so I want to do a complete fresh install.

Since I found so many apps being this is the first time having my primary PC a Linux distro, I'd hatee to have to look for all these programs/apps again.

Can anyone give any suggestions as to the best way to go about doing this or any other suggestions (especially if you have an opinion on the SSH key and FTP password issues).

**on a side note, my Windows VM's running filezilla with same passwords, don't have any issue asking for password each time. This made me even more uncomfortable.

Thanks for any suggestions, comments of help you can extend here.

For all packages installed on your system:

then, to restore from this list,

For stuff like fstab, and other files in /etc, you can build a list, and pass that to tar - or, just use tar to back up the whole directory structure under /etc, then restore it to a temporary directory and copy the files you are interested in (if not all).

Application settings, will unfortunately likely be all over the place in your home directory. .config is a new standard of sorts, but you'll find not every application you use has adapted to it. So, your settings may be found in places like

If you expect compromised configuration files, I'd manually inspect files before backing up, or restoring.