Question: I know, I just can hit `Super`+`A` to see all installed apps in Ubuntu, but I need a command to list their names. The command

```
dpkg --get-selections | awk '{print $1}'

```

is also not an option because it shows all installed packages and it contains drivers, kernels and libraries.

Answer: 
To get the list of all your installed applications with their names, the easiest way is to do:

```
sudo apt-get install aptitude
aptitude -F' * %p -> %d ' --no-gui --disable-columns search '?and(~i,!?section(libs), !?section(kernel), !?section(devel))'

```

It will get you a nice list of all installed packages that are not libraries, not kernels, not development package like this:

```
* zip -> Archiver for .zip files 
* zlib1g -> compression library - runtime 
* zlib1g-dev -> compression library - development 
* zsh -> shell with lots of features 
* zsh-common -> architecture independent files for Zsh 

```

It's more complete since it also lists non-GUI applications that won't appear in the `.desktop` files
Not sure why most of the answers posted involves extracting the filename of .desktop shortcuts. Your .desktop shortcut filename can be anything but what matters is the `Name` field inside the shortcut file. If you want to build the list of installed application names showing in Dash, just "grep" that field under `[Desktop Entry]`

Rudimental code, with bash

```bsh
#!/bin/bash

for file in /usr/share/applications/*.desktop;
do
    while IFS== read -r key val
    do
        if [[ -z $key ]]; then
            continue
        else
            if [[ $key =~ ^\[Desktop\ Entry ]]; then
                interesting_field=1
            elif [[ $key =~ ^\[ ]]; then
                interesting_field=0
            fi
        fi
        [[ $interesting_field -eq 1 ]] && [[ $key == "Name" ]] && echo $val
    done < $file
done

```

But this does not take into account shortcuts that are hidden from being showed in Dash. Someone with better understand of .desktop spec might want to further expand this code to exclude those kinda of shortcuts

**Edit : another attempt, with Python**

```py
#!/usr/bin/python

from os import listdir
from os.path import isfile, join
import ConfigParser

SHORTCUTDIR = "/usr/share/applications/"

shortcuts = [ file for file in listdir(SHORTCUTDIR) if isfile(join(SHORTCUTDIR, file)) and file.endswith(".desktop") ]
dash_shortcuts = []

for f in shortcuts:
    c = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser()
    c.read(SHORTCUTDIR + f)

    try:
        if c.getboolean('Desktop Entry', 'NoDisplay') is True:
            continue
    except ConfigParser.NoOptionError:
        pass

    try:
        if "unity" in c.get('Desktop Entry', 'NotShowIn').lower():
            continue
    except ConfigParser.NoOptionError:
        pass

    try:
        if "unity" not in c.get('Desktop Entry', 'OnlyShowIn').lower():
            continue
    except ConfigParser.NoOptionError:
        pass

    dash_shortcuts += [ c.get("Desktop Entry", "Name") ]

for s in sorted(dash_shortcuts, key=str.lower):
    print s

```