I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.4. All went well except I lost several previously installed apps, including my calendar program and a favorite game (and I don't know what else yet).

I reinstalled the calendar, but have not been able to get the game back. The name of the game was something like "gnomemetris," or something similar. It consisted of a matrix of colored balls. The object is to click on groups of balls to remove them and accumulate a high score.

That game was a favorite and I'd like to get it back. I've searched Applications/Ubuntu Software Center and Synaptic Package Manager but can't find any program like that. My guess is that the game is no longer included in the repositories that Lucid looks at.

If anyone can give some advice on how to get that game back, or info on what happens to older software during an upgrade, I would appreciate some advice.

Was the game http://live.gnome.org/Same%20Gnome ?

An upgrade, not a fresh install of the OS? You would have thought that if the software was available for the new version, it would be installed automatically, although that cannot be relied on, what with packages changing in name, and so on.

In the case of an rpm system, I'd do something like an 'rpm -qa > packages', but you are on a deb system. This suggests that the equivalent is 'dpkg -l' (and redirect the output somewhere that it is bound to be caught by your pre-install backup...of course, you do do a pre-install backup, don't you?).

In principle you could try to script a re-install of the missing packages, but you may well fall over the same problems that caused problems with the upgrade in the first place, so I'd suggest getting the list and using it as a 'clues list' for stuff that you would expect to find in your new install, so that you can try to manually install (or decide not to install) stuff.

Thanks craigevil: Yes, "Same Gnome" is the name of the game that I couldn't remember. Apparently the upgrade removed the original version and replaced it with the new "Swell Foop" game, which is similar but much inferior (IMO) to the original.

Your clue helped me find and install the original "Same Gnome" game again. Much appreciated.

Actually, dpkg has two options --get-selections and --set-selections.
get writes to STDOUT so you can create a file. set will read the file. You would use get on one configuration and save the file. The use set to duplicate that configuration on a second place.

~~~ 0;-Dan