How to reinstall Debian and extra applications?
 

I reinstall Debian on a regular basis and my biggest problem is to reinstall the extra applications I need with Synaptic. So far, I reinstall them one at a time when I discover it's not there and I need it.

Is there an easy way to do that automatically?

Thank you for your help.

Actually, yes, there is and it is really easy:
At first, we need the list of installed packages on from the system that you want to "re-fresh":
Save that file in a location that can be accessed later from the newly installed system, like an USB storage device. Also, make a backup of all the config files you want to keep, if you haven't already.
Then go ahead and install the new system, the minimal installation is all we need.
If you have done that we need to tell dpkg about the packages you want to have installed on the system, for that we feed it with the package list we have created in the first step:
Now all we have to do is to tell the package manager to actually install those packages:
Done, system installation complete. If you now just copy in the config files you have backed up from the previous system you have a fresh and clean re-install of your system.