Take the 2-minute tour ×  How does the Software Center keep
track of installed packages? In which files/database?
share|improve this question add comment  2 Answers  up vote 4
down vote accepted  dpkg (Software-Center is a graphical front-
end of dpkg) keeps track of the installed packages in
/var/lib/dpkg/status.  share|improve this answer This seems like
the right answer - Software Center gets its information about
which packages are installed from dpkg's database. –  loevborg
Jan 19 '11 at 9:51 Sounds right but when you want to install a
package, you also need to find the associated .deb file to know
which files to remove right? Where are those .deb files cached?
–  Olivier Lalonde Jan 19 '11 at 14:16 That didn't make sense.
You remove files when you UNinstall a package. That information
is in /var/lib/dpkg/info/. –  psusi Jan 19 '11 at 14:46 add
comment  From what I can tell, it uses xapian databases located
at /var/cache/software-center/xapian.  From a quick read over
the code here, specifically the 'reb