I would like to know what causes Ubuntu and/or Synaptic to recognize a program as being installed.
- Is there an equivalent of the Windows registry that an application has to have a entry in?
- Does a program have to be installed from a .*deb package to be classified as installed and show up in Synaptic?
- And where are files for an installed program usually kept? I know that configuration files are kept in
/home/x/but not much else.
Best Answer
dpkg, through apt or aptitude keeps a database of the installed software in
/var/lib/dpkg/status.You can learn more about this here.
My response is based on a response given in this forum discussion.
As @psusi pointed out, because apt and aptitude are merely front-ends to dpkg, it is actually dpkg that keeps track of packaging.