How To Find Installed Packages Version In Linux

If you were ever curious about how to check and find Installed Packages Version In Linux, then this brief tutorial will help you do so. These days, package management is much better than before with the help of many graphical package managers.

Check out Our Best VPS Hosting and Wodpress hosting Too for scalling your business needs

However, the best way to get things done is always the command line way; it is quicker and a lot easier.
There are different commands to see the package version in different versions of Linux.

Check Installed Packages Version In Linux Command

In this tutorial, we will teach you how to find a package version in some popular Linux distributions like Arch Linux and its derivatives, Debian and its derivatives, RHEL, and derivatives.

Find a package version in ARCH based systems.

To find out an installed package (eg. VLC) version in Arch Linux and its derivatives, such as Antergos or Manjaro, execute the command below.

pacman -Q vlc

Sample output:

vlc 2.2.4-3

As you can see in the output above, the installed version of VLC package is 2.2.4-3.
To see more details about the package, execute the following.

pacman -Qi vlc

Sample output:

Name : vlc
Version : 2.2.4-3
Description : A multi-platform MPEG, VCD/DVD, and DivX player
Architecture : x86_64
URL : http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
Licenses : LGPL2.1 GPL2
Groups : None
Provides : None
Depends On : a52dec libdvbpsi libxpm libdca libproxy sdl_image
 libdvdnav libtiger lua libmatroska zvbi taglib
 libmpcdec ffmpeg2.8 faad2 libupnp libshout libmad
 libmpeg2 xcb-util-keysyms libtar libxinerama
Optional Deps : avahi: for service discovery using bonjour protocol
 [installed]
 libnotify: for notification plugin [installed]
 gtk2: for notify plugin [installed]
 [...]
  lua-socket: for http interface
 qt4: for the GUI [installed]
Required By : None
Optional For : smtube
Conflicts With : vlc-plugin
Replaces : vlc-plugin
Installed Size : 53.28 MiB
Packager : Antonio Rojas <[email protected]>
Build Date : Sun 24 Jul 2016 03:12:59 PM IST
Install Date : Fri 05 Aug 2016 11:22:54 AM IST
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : No
Validated By : Signature

The command above will show the complete details including package description, the version, build date, install date, and package owner as well as more.

Find a package version in DEB based systems.

In Debian, Ubuntu, and derivatives such as Linux Mint or Elementary OS, you will be able to find the installed package version, like Apache webserver, by running the command below.

dpkg -s apache2 | grep -i version

Sample output:

Version: 2.4.18-2ubuntu3.1

To see more details about an installed package, execute the following.

dpkg -s apache2

Sample output:

Package: apache2
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: httpd
Installed-Size: 488
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <[email protected]>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 2.4.18-2ubuntu3.1
Replaces: apache2.2-bin, apache2.2-common
Provides: httpd, httpd-cgi
Depends: lsb-base, procps, perl, mime-support, apache2-bin (= 2.4.18-2ubuntu3.1), apache2-utils (>= 2.4), apache2-data (= 2.4.18-2ubuntu3.1)
Pre-Depends: dpkg (>= 1.17.14)
Recommends: ssl-cert
Suggests: www-browser, apache2-doc, apache2-suexec-pristine | apache2-suexec-custom, ufw
Conflicts: apache2.2-bin, apache2.2-common
Conffiles:
 /etc/apache2/apache2.conf da32fcc6a783acaebf0d74c17c726bf7
 /etc/default/apache-htcacheclean ae8721a0bc5b4e2ef7a5258b1e9db5c5
 [..]
 /etc/logrotate.d/apache2 7322a4f050c1e2454249695236a3472c
 /etc/ufw/applications.d/apache2-utils.ufw.profile f8d4fd920e598ceb4379613c6261f6af
Description: Apache HTTP Server
 The Apache HTTP Server Project's goal is to build a secure, efficient and
 extensible HTTP server as standards-compliant open source software. The
 result has long been the number one web server on the Internet.
 .
 Installing this package results in a full installation, including the
 configuration files, init scripts and support scripts.
Homepage: http://httpd.apache.org/
Original-Maintainer: Debian Apache Maintainer

You can also find a package version by running the following command.

apt-show-versions apache2

Sample output:

apache2:amd64/xenial-security 2.4.18-2ubuntu3.1 uptodate
apache2:i386 not installed

Like you can see in the result above, we have installed apache2 64 bit version and its version is 2.4.18
If the ‘apt-show-versions’ program is not installed, you can install it with the command below.

sudo apt install apt-show-versions

You should now know how to check the installed package’s version.

• If you are wondering how you can see the version of a package in the repositories; for example, if there some sort of way to see the version of a package that is available in the official repositories. Yes it is possible, search for the tutorial: How to check the available version of a package in Ubuntu repositories

Find a package version in RPM based systems.

To see which version is installed, (Eg. Httpd) in RPM based distributions like Red Hat, CentOs, Fedora, Scientific Linux, and openSUSE, execute the command below.

rpm -qi httpd

Sample output:

Name : httpd
Version : 2.4.6
Release : 40.el7.centos.4
Architecture: x86_64
Install Date: Thu 11 Aug 2016 08:08:45 PM IST
Group : System Environment/Daemons
Size : 9806117
License : ASL 2.0
Signature : RSA/SHA256, Mon 18 Jul 2016 09:35:16 PM IST, Key ID 24c6a8a7f4a80eb5
Source RPM : httpd-2.4.6-40.el7.centos.4.src.rpm
Build Date : Mon 18 Jul 2016 09:02:11 PM IST
Build Host : worker1.bsys.centos.org
Relocations : (not relocatable)
Packager : CentOS BuildSystem <http://bugs.centos.org>
Vendor : CentOS
URL : http://httpd.apache.org/
Summary : Apache HTTP Server
Description :

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful, efficient, and extensible web server.
The command above will display the installed package version, build date, license, description, and more. Like you can see in the output above, the http package version is 2.4.6.
This should be all for now, hope this tutorial helped with more to come.
Cheers! and
One more thing…
Share this tutorial with your networking and hosting administrators, as it will help them and make my countless hours of work count.
Thanks.
Don’t forget to  see best our related best guides and tutorials;

1. How To Compress And Decompress Files In Linux