Dear experts,

Is there a command to check if certain software exist in my computer?

I only know to check if certain rpm package is installed, I can use rpm -q to check.

But if certain software comes wit the distribution or if it has been installed by tarball, how do I query its existence?

is there a universal command that queries instead of just query rpm packages.

Thanks in advance,

Not sure if there's a command for that, but when you are installing applications from a foreign package/source on your distribution, it's totally up to you to keep things organized. Say, compile your programs always to /usr/local/program (with the "--prefix" parameter when running "./configure"). That way is easier to keep track of what you are doing.

Depending of your distribution/OS and packages, the installation varies. All programs in Slackware installed from native format (.tgz) can be tracked down at /var/log/packages (if I remember right) while native FreeBSD packages are can be viewed at /var/log/db (or something of that sort.. I'm on WinXP right now and my memory is failing ).

So, short answer is: Try to stick with native packages for your distribution. If you've to compile something, compile it to a local where you can actually see them installed /usr/local/<program> is nice...

Hello Megaman X, (from the Rockman video game? ^^)


Thats cool, thanks for the help!

Cool Niceman2005! You are welcome!. And yes, huge fan of Megaman/Rockman here ghehe.

I just wanted to mention checkinstall. I think it will create programs you compile yourself into various package formats (deb/rpm/tgz). Maybe it might be uesful?